


Coming Clean

by Anonymous_Introvert78



Series: Seventeen Hurt/Comfort [3]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Drug Abuse, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Here we go, Hospitals, Hurt Xu Ming Hao | The8, Hurt/Comfort, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, LET'S GET IT, Protective Dongsaengs, Protective Hyungs, Rehabilitation, Smoking, Surgery, Xu Ming Hao | The8-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2020-10-24 06:56:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 28,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20701793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymous_Introvert78/pseuds/Anonymous_Introvert78
Summary: ~~~~~~~~~"I didn't even know I was sick."~~~~~~~~~





	1. Xu Minghao

I'm writing a thirteen-part series! One story for each member.

The first chapter will be up in a few days once I've finished posting "Bipolar Opposites" which is a GOT7 Yugyeom-Centric fic if you want to go and check that one out, so please anticipate it!

**TRIGGER WARNING!!!!!!**

This fic contains potentially triggering content such as drug addiction, drug abuse, mentions of suicide and suicidal ideation. I wrote this story in light of the incident surrounding iKON's B.I. because I wanted to portray what the life of an addict is really like and how easy it is to fall into that trap, so if you believe you may be triggered by these themes then please do not read this story.

**There will be no major character death in this series.**

** **


	2. 제 1 장

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song Recommendation:  
"Chasing Cars" by Snow Patrol

Minghao liked dark concepts. He liked quirky and innocent concepts, too, but the sinister ones – the ones where he was allowed to curl his lip in seductive cruelty and flex his muscles like he’d always wanted – held a special place in his heart.

He loved to hear the scream of the crowd as they tried not to swoon over the thirteen sweaty bodies pounding into the ground in front of them.

He loved feeling so powerful, especially with the choreography that showcased the strength of his moves. And he loved the intricate stunts that stretched even his capabilities and yet were still a joy to perfect.

Minghao liked dark concepts. Just not when they seeped from his idol life into his private life. Then he didn’t like dark concepts at all. 

And he had no idea as he caught Soonyoung’s eye from across the stage and winked with cheeky excitement that his existence was about to get very, very dark indeed.

The roar in his ears was almost enough to make him pull out his headset but he had made that mistake before and hadn’t been able to get it back in before his next singing part. That had been messy. 

So instead, he just honed in on the shrill screech reverberating through his core from every angle. He never felt more loved than he did in these moments.

His members were with him – his brothers, his family – the room was packed to bursting with people who adored him, who screamed his name on sight, who cried when they got to meet him. 

And he was doing what he loved: dancing. Nothing else brought him a sensation as euphoric as this one.

He dropped to one knee as the three leaders took centre stage for their segment of ‘Getting Closer’ and his gaze instinctively travelled to the spot directly across from him. 

Chan was grinning his way, sweat dripping off the tip of his nose and mingling with his hair, but his smile could have cured cancer.

The beat dropped, Minghao saw some of the others starting to move out of the corner of his eye and timed his spin to perfection. He pushed up with his hands, rotated in mid air … and something went terribly, terribly wrong.

It felt like a snap. A strain, a tug and then a full-on snap as something inside of him burst like a rubber band that had been stretched too far. 

The pain was searing, unlike anything he’d ever felt before, but his scream was drowned out by the deafening cheers, the thumping music and the voices of his brothers.

Everyone else was still on the ground, participating in several half-hearted push-ups and Minghao knew that he would have to get up in the next two seconds or he would be noticed.

But he couldn’t. No matter how hard he tried, he could not get his left leg to move, and the agony was only increasing with each attempt he made.

He just lay there on the stage, eyes watering and mouth gasping, as he pressed his face into the floor beneath him and tried to grit his teeth through the pain. It didn’t work.

By now, everyone in that arena could see something had happened. There were particularly loud screams, he could hear shrieks of his name from the front rows, but the music was still playing and the others were still dancing, as though he was just invisible.

And then Mingyu was there. 

Mingyu had been right behind him when it had happened and had probably seen the entire thing play out. Mingyu knew something was wrong, and as soon as he got a look at Minghao’s streaming eyes and pain-twisted face, he acted just like a big brother should.

He took hold of Minghao’s shoulder and the boy obediently rolled over onto his back, reaching up to wrap his arms around his hyung’s neck as he was hefted off the floor with ease. 

The noise was deafening and he wanted nothing more than to pass out from the pain but his body just wasn’t complying with his wishes.

Mingyu was running now, making a sprint for the wings where he knew that ice packs and first aiders awaited him, but all he could focus on was his friend’s hand gripping his knees in order to carry him, and all he could feel was excruciating anguish.

It was his knee. He knew that now. Something had popped or torn or snapped in his knee and if his anatomy was correct, then that was very, very bad for a dancer. 

That was potentially career-ending. This injury – whatever it may be – could have cost him the paradise he had been experiencing just a few minutes ago.

The staff converged on them the second they were yanked from flashing stage lights to blackened back rooms, and Mingyu set him down with a parting kiss to his hair before he was forced to return to the routine. 

Minghao wished he had stayed. He wished there was someone he trusted enough to hold him through this agony.

“It hurts!” he cried as one of the stagehands took hold of his leg and started to feel it up and down. “It hurts! Please make it stop hurting!”

They were layering ice on top of the area that burned and he could feel his jacket being ripped from his body and his sweat being mopped from his brow. 

Questions were bouncing back and forth over the place where he sat, leaning against a chest with his eyes closed and his breathing heavy.

They moved him shortly after that. Multiple arms slipped beneath him – thankfully, they left his knee alone – and he was valeted into the dressing room to be laid on the sofa. 

By now, his energy had dwindled to pathetic standards, drained by all the pained flinches and grunts he’d been making for God knows how long.

He was tired. And he was broken. And his career might be over.

“How is he?” came Seungcheol’s voice and Minghao opened his eyes to see his leader standing above him, face twisted in concern, as Jun knelt beside the sofa and started stroking a hand through his dongsaeng’s sweaty hair.

Minghao cried harder. Jun pressed their foreheads together, whispering words of comfort and assurance, but Minghao just cried. 

He didn’t know what else he was supposed to do. He was hurting, he was scared and he was humiliated. Crying seemed to be the only option.

“It’s over,” he whispered up at Jun, vision blurred through tears and words distorted by sobs. “It’s all over. Everything’s over.”

Jun shushed him, shaking his head gently and pressing a kiss to his perspiring forehead.

“It’s not over,” he swore. “You’re going to be okay. Hyungs are going to look after you and you’re going to be just fine. I promise, Hao, you’re going to be fine.”

That was the first time Jun ever lied to him.

“An ambulance has been called,” one of the managers was explaining to Seungcheol, who had perched on the very edge of the sofa in order to be closer to his distressed little brother. “It’s just a precaution seeing as I don’t think it’s a good idea to move him without professional help.”

“What do you think it is?” Seungcheol inquired, a finger rubbing back and forth over Minghao’s thigh in the hopes it would provide comfort. “What do you think he’s done to it?”

The manager sighed. “I think it’s most likely his ACL.”

Minghao had known it from the second he’d fallen face first onto that stage, but hearing someone say it out loud truly cemented the diagnosis in his mind and he gave a poorly-concealed wail of despair.

ACL injuries were notoriously difficult to recover from. He’d heard stories of fellow dancers who’d been at the peak of their careers, had made one slip up and had been reduced to nothing because of it. 

A torn ACL meant months of rehabilitation. No athlete was ever really the same afterwards.

“Minghao?”

Minghao was pulled back to the fibres of reality by Seungcheol’s soft words from above him. He opened his eyes, fresh tears dribbling down the side of his face, and saw both his hyungs leaning over him with their expressions folded into ones of forced confidence. They were just as worried as he was for the sake of his career.

“Jun and I have got to go back on stage,” Seungcheol started, cutting himself off when Minghao gave a panicked whine of protest and grabbed onto Jun’s hand with all the strength he had. “I’m sorry, Hao, but if we don’t, the fans will freak out and the others can’t keep them occupied for long.”

He was right. But it didn’t mean that Minghao had to like it.

“Manager-hyung’s going to go to the hospital with you,” the leader continued as Jun pressed multiple kisses into his baby’s hair. “And we’re going to head right over there after the concert, okay? You’re going to be really well looked after.”

Minghao forced himself to nod, clutching at Jun and Seungcheol’s hands one last time before they were chivvied towards the door and he had no choice but to let them go and watch them walk away.

He wished they’d stay. He wished they would hold him in their arms all the way to the hospital so that he wouldn’t have to be alone. But they couldn’t, and so it was just him and his ACL. The most abusive relationship that had ever lived. 


	3. 제 2 장

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song Recommendation:  
"Fallen" by Sarah McLachlan

He lay with his arms flat at his sides and his legs stretched out straight like a corpse positioned carefully on a slab in the morgue, a kind of cage fixed over his knee, while the gurney was slowly valeted into the doughnut-shaped machine that towered above him. 

There was music playing in the background, probably to soothe him from the good forty-five minute wait he was now destined to endure, but the headphones they’d stuffed in his ears just blocked it out completely and it felt pointless.

Minghao just stared up at the ceiling, flinching slightly as the clanking and whirring began to perforate his ear drums, and tried to imagine what the others would be doing at this moment. He’d arrived at the hospital a couple of hours ago so the concert would have finished, but none of them were here and he felt oddly lonely.

The papery hospital gown they’d forced him to wear was thin and far too incapable of conquering the cold around him but he couldn’t even shiver because he’d been told to move as little as possible. 

All he could do was lie there, staring up at that blank white ceiling while the magnetic machine zapped his injured knee with whatever electro-something waves would help them see what was going on inside him.

Morphine had kicked in a while ago so he felt no pain. He was just bored. Bored and anxious.

Now that the original shock had died down, it was embarrassing to think how he’d cried like a baby, clinging onto Jun, Mingyu and Seungcheol especially in front of all the fans. His ears flushed red even at the thought of it and he quickly directed his mind to something else.

Unfortunately, that something else just so happened to be his dancing career teetering on the brink of extinction. 

If this MRI showed anything worse than just a pulled muscle, he could kiss goodbye to his contract and pack his bags tonight. The company didn’t have time to rehabilitate an injury that severe.

He was just like an injured racehorse. Useless and unrecoverable. Sooner or later, someone would have to put him out of his misery and shoot him between the eyes.

“Alright, Minghao-ssi!” came the sing-song voice of the nurse as she bustled into the room and slid her patient out of the machine. “Well done! You did very well.”

Minghao nodded, muttering a brief grunt of thanks before he was shuffling awkwardly from the gurney to the hospital bed that lay beside him, awaiting his presence. There was an ever-so-slight twinge in his knee and he winced but the pain was gone as quickly as it started and within moments, he was leaving that godforsaken room.

“There’s some friends of yours waiting for you,” the nurse told him as he walked alongside his gurney and Minghao felt his heart leap.

His friends had come to see him. They had come to hold him and tell him it was alright and that they weren’t going to shoot him between the eyes because he was no longer fit to race anymore.

“There he is,” came the voice laden with fondness as Minghao was wheeled back into his room and met with the grinning faces of Seungcheol and Soonyoung looking down at him. “How are you doing?”

Minghao tried to smile back, but the only thing he could think about were the straps securing his leg to the bed. Tears welled up in the corners of his eyes and he blinked furiously to try and be rid of them but they only forged further paths down his face. And now that he’d started, he couldn’t find it in himself to stop.

He didn’t even notice when Soonyoung climbed into the bed beside him and Seungcheol took his hand in both of his own, squeezing as tightly as he could in order to provide comfort in a situation where comfort was not a component.

He didn’t hear their whispered words of assurance and love because he didn’t believe their promises of a bright future. 

He didn’t believe a dancer of his ability would ever return to the height he had soared to if he were to find out that one of the most crucial ligaments in his body had been snapped.

He just cried. And eventually, the morphine started to overcome his consciousness and he succumbed to sleep.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Complete severing of the anterior cruciate ligament and both minisci. Total surgical reconstruction scheduled for eight days’ time. Expected recovery period: seven months.

“I’m done, aren’t I?” Minghao whispered from where he was lying on the living room sofa, eyes fixated on something no one else could see in their blank dissociation. “I’m just … I’m just done.”

“Don’t say that,” Soonyoung muttered without looking up from his book.

“Why not?” Minghao shot back, a spasm of anger coursing through his tone and causing his hyung to raise his head with his eyebrows lifted in surprised incredulity. “It’s true, isn’t it? You heard the doctor. Expected recovery period is seven months. By then, I’ll be weak and unfit and probably incredibly overweight, so tell me, hyung, in what way am I not done?”

Soonyoung was frowning at him, not with hurt or disappointment but with confusion. He set his book down and unfolded his legs from the armchair, shuffling forwards slightly to prove how serious he was.

“When did you become someone who gives up so quickly?”

Minghao scoffed, asking himself why he was treating his friend so coldly when Soonyoung had done nothing wrong, but unable to think of any other way to react.

“No, I’m serious, Hao,” the dance leader continued. “People come back from these injuries all the time but they have to work for it. You can’t just expect recovery to be handed to you on a silver platter. You’ve hurt your knee and that sucks – it really does – but the only one who’s telling you that you’re ‘done’ is you.”

By now, Minghao was refusing to look at him. He was disgusted by his own behaviour, ashamed at how bratty and sulky he was acting. He didn’t want to cry again – not when he’d already done that more than enough – so he stayed silent.

“We’re not going to leave you behind.” Soonyoung was still going, not giving up, not relenting, ploughing through despite his dongsaeng’s best intentions to ignore him. “We’ll wait for you, Hao, and it will take time but the rest of us aren’t going anywhere. We won’t continue on without you if that’s what you think.”

It is what he’d thought. He’d thought they would just toss him aside, telling the media that they were giving him time to recover, while they moved on to write more songs and perform more numbers until eventually, the world would forget the thirteenth member who fucked up his knee and was never heard from again.

“What am I …” Minghao choked out, still not moving his gaze from the corner of the ceiling. “If I’m not a dancer? If everything I’ve worked for until now is for nothing, what am I supposed to do? I quit school for this life. I don’t have the right qualifications. I can’t get another job. I’m … I’ll be washed up.”

He didn’t realise Soonyoung had moved until his hyung was right beside him, perched on the edge of the sofa with a hand around his thigh.

“You’re still a dancer, Hao,” he murmured comfortingly. “You’ll always be a dancer. Nothing can ever change that. And even if it did, the idol life does not define you. Without it, you are still one of the kindest, humblest, coolest people I know. You’ve fallen into this hole and you don’t know how to get out and you’re scared, I get that. But it’s not impossible. If anyone can do it, you can.”

The faith Soonyoung had in him was misplaced. That was all Minghao could think. He wasn’t nearly as strong as he was being given credit for. He was broken, he felt broken, and therefore everything seemed impossible. The road to recovery was too long and he couldn’t even walk its path due to the nature of his injury.

But he wasn’t going to do it alone. Soonyoung had promised he wouldn’t have to do it alone. They weren’t going to march off into the distance, leaving him crawling after them with choked pleas falling on deaf ears and desperate hands grasping at thin air. They were going to walk right beside him, picking him up every time he fell and slowing their pace every time he tired.

He wasn’t going to be in solitude for a single step.

“You should get some sleep,” Soonyoung said, cutting him from his internal soliloquy with a gentle hand squeezing his shoulder. “You won’t be able to eat anything until after the surgery tomorrow so it’s probably best you take your mind off the hunger.”

Minghao nodded, and for the first time in a week, his smile was genuine. Soonyoung reached up and ruffled his hair affectionately before tugging the blanket further up his little brother’s body.

Normally, Minghao would have been embarrassed at the babying, but he had spent the last seven days refusing all offerings of love and comfort and he didn’t want to do that anymore. He wanted to feel them by his side as they tucked him in and kissed his forehead and combed their fingers through his hair, even if it made him feel like a child.

“Night, hyung,” he muttered as his eyes already started to droop obediently. 


	4. 제 3 장

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song Recommendation:  
"Bullet To The Heart" by Jackson Wang
> 
> This is probably one of my favourite chapters that I've ever written.

“Hyung?”

Jun hummed in response from where he was folded up on the hardbacked hospital chair in Minghao’s room, engrossed in a video on his phone as the injured boy continued to float around in his dreamy state of post-op anaesthesia.

“What’s going to happen now?”

The eldest in the room looked up at Hansol and Chan sitting on the other side of Minghao’s bed, trying to seem as if they weren’t anxiously awaiting their friend’s awakening by asking questions they already knew the answers to.

“Well,” Jun started, setting his phone down and glancing instinctively up at the monitor projecting Minghao’s vitals into green lines and flashing lights. “The doctor said he’ll be in a wheelchair for a few days, just until the incision’s healed, and then he’ll start physio. That will probably take a while.”

“How long is a while?”

“I don’t know.” And it was the truth. He didn’t know. Everybody was different when it came to rehabilitation. “I’d say three months at the very, very least.”

There was a hum of acknowledgement from the younger two as every eye returned to the boy in the bed and the way his mouth hung open in his blissful oblivion.

The surgery had taken an excruciatingly long time in which Seungcheol would not stop calling to check everything was okay.

Jun had almost got down on his knees and kissed the doctors feet when they finally returned his brother to him, not just because he could see Minghao was safe and the procedure had been successful but also because it meant he could tell their leader to calm the fuck down.

The surgeon had poked his head around the door roughly an hour ago to check on the patient, making assertive nods as he read the vitals on the monitor and finishing with an affectionate pat on Minghao’s motionless foot through the bed clothes.

He’d told them to expect a very groggy awakening in a few hours and then he’d left.

Now they were just waiting. Waiting to see how Minghao would feel when he awoke. Would he feel better? Renewed? He would be in pain, they knew that, but there was a morphine drip at the ready.

Would he feel hopeless like he had for so many days now? Would the newfound strength he had garnered after his conversation with Soonyoung have been sapped from his body by the anaesthesia they’d pumped into his bloodstream? 

Who knew? Who knew … ?

There was a soft groan from atop the fluffed-up white pillows and all attention turned to the man whose head was slowly lolling to one side, nose scrunching up in distaste of his new surroundings.

“Hey, hyung,” Chan piped up, grinning from ear to ear once Minghao opened his eyes and blinked stupidly up at them. “Did you have a good sleep?”

Minghao stared at him, eyes narrowed in confused suspicion as his gaze roamed around the room before coming to rest on the IV embedded in the crook of his elbow.

He raised his head off the pillows with a movement so swift Jun was surprised it wasn’t painful and gaped down at the tiny tube protruding from his skin.

“Wha’ the fuck is that?” he announced, words slurring together in his sedated delirium. “Why’s there a straw in my arm?”

His fingers groped for the line and Jun had to reach forward and intercept him before he ripped the only thing that was keeping him from terrible pain.

Under any other circumstances, he would have panicked at the way Minghao seemed to have no idea where he was or what was going on, but the surgeon had told them to expect this.

“Leave it alone,” he ordered, much to his dongsaeng’s dismay.

“Are they draining me?” he asked, panicked expression rounding on Hansol who had his lips pressed together in an attempt not to laugh. “Are they pumping me with … with …”

“With what?” Chan asked, voice cracking slightly in his barely-concealed hilarity. “What do you think they’re pumping you with?”

Minghao glared up at him, judging eyes giving the maknae the full once-over before he declared his opinion.

“You’re short.”

Hansol snorted loudly, pitching forwards in his chair and clutching his hand to his mouth as the drugged boy regarded him with the deepest disgust. 

“And you’re loud.”

“Minghao, be nice,” Jun warned but he could feel the irresistible upwards pull of his own lips as two foggy eyes turned on him with a mouth curled in irritation before the entire expression melted into something completely different.

“Oh my god,” he murmured, flopping back on the pillows as he gaped up at Jun with his mouth hanging open and his eyes bulging out of his head. “You’re so beautiful.”

Jun was completely speechless. Hansol and Chan were bright red in the face, rocking backwards and forwards in their seats as silent tears of mirth streamed down their cheeks.

“Film this!” Hansol wheezed through uncontrollable chortles. “You have to film this!”

Chan’s phone was out of his pocket in moments and Jun knew Minghao was going to murder them for this when he finally regained his sanity but this was all just far too funny to put a stop to.

Minghao was looking from side to side, deeply disorientated and hopelessly bewildered by all the noises and laughter going on around him when, from his perspective, there was absolutely nothing funny about this situation.

“Why are you laughing?” he whimpered and Jun realised too late that a tear had slid down his little brother’s cheek.

“Oh, no,” he cried, struggling to bite back a laugh as he reached for a box of tissues on the table top and put it on Minghao’s lap. “Don’t cry. We’re sorry, Hao. Please don’t cry.”

Minghao dabbed clumsily at his watering eyes, missing several times before he hit his target and by then, they were red and sore-looking from all the tissue fibres he had managed to rub into them. Jun had never seen anything funnier.

“Can I keep this?” the boy mumbled and it took his friends a couple of moments to realise he was talking about the tissue box in his arms.

“Sure,” Jun chuckled. “It’s yours.”

Minghao gave a hum of appreciation before he proceeded to tuck the cardboard cuboid into the bed with him, patting it affectionately as his eyes started to flutter closed.

Jun caught Hansol’s gaze from across the bed and the younger boy mouthed the words _ Oh my God, _to which Jun couldn’t help but bark out a sharp laugh he tried and failed to smother with his hand over his mouth. 

“Hey,” Minghao suddenly announced, eyelids snapping back open as he frowned up at the ceiling. “Am I rapper?”

“Uh …” Chan started, still holding his phone aloft with the red light blinking in indication of the recording. “Kind of. You’re mainly a dancer though.”

Minghao nodded absently, still transfixed on the ceiling above him as his free hand stroked the tissue box at his side.

“I feel like a rapper,” he informed them, deadly serious expression hardening his facial muscles despite how the three people around him seemed to be quivering with laughter.

He started bopping his head to invisible music, puckering his lips and banging his hand clumsily against the bedsheets.

“Drop the beat. Yo … yo … yo.”

“Oh my God, I’m going to sell this for a billion won,” Chan was gasping, clutching at his ribs as he continued to point the camera at his poor, unfortunate hyung.

Minghao didn’t even seem to remember they were there with him as he continued with his improvised lyrical masterpiece, eyes still unfocused and glassy from the anaesthesia that didn’t seem to be wearing off anytime soon.

“Yo, yo, yo … Big toe … My name’s not Joe … It’s Minghao … And I’m not a cow …”

That finally sent Hansol off the edge of his chair and onto the floor where Jun couldn’t see him but he didn’t need to in order to know the younger boy was rolling around on the concrete with his arms wrapped around his stomach.

“I think you should stick to dancing,” Jun said kindly as he patted Minghao’s hand. “You’re better at that.”

He was suddenly hit with the painful reminder of the boy’s predicament and almost felt guilty before he realised that Minghao had absolutely no idea what was happening and probably wouldn’t remember any of this when he came around properly.

And he was far too interested in his own monologue.

“I’m a good dancer,” he said, turning to Chan as though it was of the most vital importance he tell the maknae of his abilities. “I think I’m the best dancer in the group.”

“Oh, really?” Chan replied, quirking his eyebrow at Jun. “Tell me more, hyung.”

“I’m much better than Chan.”

Hansol sounded a little bit like he was dying from where he was still situated on the floor and even Jun was starting to lose control as he saw the look of incredulous disbelief on Chan’s face.

“You know what I mean?” Minghao continued shamelessly, trying to prop himself up on his elbows before Jun reached out and pushed him back onto the pillows. “Chan … Eh … he’s good and all but me … Well, I’m … I’m … spectacular. No … I’m better than that. I’m spectacu … lacular.”

“Oh, you are so going to be my slave for life,” Chan muttered as he continued to film, filling up his storage with blackmail material.

But Minghao had one more pearl of wisdom to share.

“And Soonyoung’s not as good as he thinks he is.”

Following that particular sentiment, he promptly fell asleep, snuggling up to the tissue box and purring contentedly.


	5. 제 4 장

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song Recommendation:  
"The More I Drink" by Blake Shelton

It was fine for a few days. It was even moderately enjoyable. Minghao got to sleep sprawled out on the sofa with his leg folded up in a gigantic black brace while the others catered to his every need. He slept for the vast majority of his time, the remnants of the anaesthesia and heavy painkillers knocking him out for a good twelve hours at a time, but it was a blessing.

It meant he didn’t have to think about the repercussions of an injury like this.

Joshua and Seungkwan had showed him the video of his drugged-up zombie-self in the hospital bed and he had begged for mercy, pleading with them not to post it online despite how hilarious even he had to admit it was. They had relented in the end and the footage had remained hidden from the public eye.

However, every idol in the industry now knew that Minghao snuggled up to tissue boxes when he was high.

But once a week had passed and he’d finally been cleared to have a shower without wearing a stupid-looking bag over his leg, he started to realise just how difficult this was going to be.

He had no strength in his entire lower left limb. He had to manoeuvre around on crutches, a deeply humiliating necessity particularly when he needed to use the bathroom. He was solely dependant on the oxycodone the doctor prescribed because he knew that as soon as he stopped taking it, he would be in for a world of pain.

The others were true to their words. They didn’t rehearse a single step without him there just to prove how serious they were about not moving on while he was laid up. But they did traipse out to the gym or to the studio every single day, in need of keeping their bodies fit and healthy for when they were a thirteen-part unit once more.

Minghao understood that. He did. They had to relieve the stress they were under from the company who were constantly pressuring Jihoon to start producing a new album. They had to maintain their physiques, particularly the remaining dancers, and Minghao understood that.

But that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt to watch them walking through that door with their hair damp to the scalp and their clothes stuck to their skin with huge sweaty grins plastered across their flushed faces as they got to go to bed with the knowledge they were still fighting fit.

Minghao didn’t have that. Minghao could feel the fat piling on every time he ate a meal and couldn’t burn the calories. Minghao could practically see the number on the scale climbing higher and higher and higher even if he wasn’t monitoring his weight. Minghao knew he was losing time the longer he waited.

And that was why he finally snapped at his physio.

“What the hell are you doing?” Jeonghan yelled as he stormed into the room only seconds after the physical therapist made a swift and angry exit. “You can’t speak to him like that, Hao! He’s trying to help you!”

“He’s not pushing me hard enough!” Minghao hissed back from where he lay flat on the padded black bench, grunting and groaning with the effort of lifting his leg up and down. “I can do more!”

“Oh!” Jeonghan laughed, throwing his hands up in the air in exasperated frustration. “Because now you’re an expert on this shit?”

Minghao almost flinched at the curse. Jeonghan never cursed, and the fact that he was doing so now was just a testament to how stressed and unhappy he was. And Minghao almost felt guilty. Almost. But this was his life and just like Soonyoung said, he was determined to get it back.

He struggled to sit up, his legs refusing to grant him any leverage and therefore forcing him to rely on his core body strength, something that had been dwindling rapidly these past weeks without sufficient exercise.

When he finally had Jeonghan in his sights, he took in the image of his hyung standing there in the middle of the gym with his arms folded and his jaw set in the way it always was when he was trying not to cry.

“Maybe not,” Minghao spat at him. “But I am an expert on my own body and I know my limits!”

“Except you don’t! You’re pushing too hard and you’re just going to hurt yourself even worse!”

“Shut up and butt the fuck out!” Minghao screamed back, lunging over to the table beside him and seizing a hand-held weight before hurling it as hard as he could.

Jeonghan only just sidestepped in time and the second Minghao heard the leaden metal hitting the floor with a sickening thunk, he realised the true extent of what he’d done. He’d tried to hurt his hyung. He’d actually tried to hurt him, and if Jeonghan’s reactions weren’t so fast, he would have.

So why wasn’t he apologising? Why wasn’t he doing anything more than just sitting there on that bench in his gym clothes, staring at the unshed tears of betrayal in his brother’s eyes? Why wasn’t he treating them with the respect they deserved?

“Fine,” Jeonghan finally said, and that single word was worse than a thousand swears and a billion screams. It just sounded exhausted. It sounded done. “Whatever you say, Minghao.”

He was gone before Minghao had time to fully process what was happening, and by the time his brain had ordered him to call out to his hyung, to plead for him to return and beg for his forgiveness, Jeonghan was already out of earshot.

He tried to get up, to follow, to repent, but fiery bolts of agony ricocheted up his leg and he let out a pathetic yelp of pain, his hand leaping instinctively to the spot where the scar was still stretched over his bones.

He hated it. It was just a reminder of the biggest hurdle he had ever faced. It was ugly and it was disgusting and he would have sold his soul to have to removed. If he had the chance, he may even have burned it off. But what good would that do?

So instead, he fished in his bag for the bottle of prescription painkillers and popped a couple in his mouth, throwing back his head and wincing as the solid capsules slid down his throat without the aid of water.

His members all tried to take the edge off his pain, both physical and emotional, but the pills were his only true release. They were the only thing that properly numbed the throbbing agony and as long as that bottle still rattled, he still had the strength to push his body to its limits.

To heal. To recover. Just like he wanted.

Because everything was under control.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I heard you tried to take Jeonghan-hyung’s head off this morning.”

Minghao opened his eyes, familiarising himself once more with the blank white ceiling of the living room before he turned his head to see Jihoon folded into an armchair, eyebrows raised and head nodding softly in approval.

“I don’t want to talk about it, hyung,” he grunted, shutting himself back in that world of darkness where he wasn’t wallowing in his own guilt. “I feel bad enough already without you giving me a lecture.”

He could hear Jihoon’s chuckle from across the room. “I wasn’t planning on it. Truthfully, I think all of us have wanted to throw 2kg of lead at him at least once in our lives.”

Minghao winced at the bluntness. He knew what Jihoon was doing: softening him up, joking his way through to his dongsaeng’s vulnerable side, but he didn’t want to give in. He didn’t want to ‘talk’ through his feelings and his anger and the crushing sensation that this injury was going to end him.

“Do you remember,” Jihoon started, and now the younger boy knew they were in for the long haul. “When you first became a trainee?”

Of course, he remembered, but that didn’t mean he wanted to be reminded of that headstrong, arrogant teenager who thought the world lay at his feet and the planets revolved around him. Jihoon had probably planned some inspirational shit to spew at him, but he was determined not to listen. He didn’t want to hear it.

But then his hyung did something he hadn’t been expecting. He didn’t talk about Minghao. He talked about himself.

“I wasn’t as good of a dancer as most of you … particularly you, Hao, and I felt like I didn’t belong. I felt like I had to get better, push further, work harder, and I ran myself into the ground because of it.”

Minghao frowned slightly, finally opening his eyes and turning his face back towards his tiniest hyung, brow furrowed in confusion. He didn’t remember any of this. His earliest memory of Jihoon was watching the boy practise and wondering how in holy hell he was supposed to match up to that.

He had thought Jihoon was invincible, even back then. Apparently, he’d been wrong.

“I didn’t tell anyone,” the older boy continued, and now Minghao could see just how serious he was being. “Not even the managers. I just kept going, hurting myself more and more the harder I pushed, and then I finally snapped my hamstring.”

Minghao sat up, using his elbows as leverage considering his knee was still a useless mass of black brace, and made a strangled sound of shock. He’d had no idea. Absolutely none. And it hit him right in the gut. How had he not noticed an injury so severe in one of his brothers?

“You didn’t know, did you?” Jihoon smirked and Minghao shook his head, lost for words and blinking blankly. “We kept it from everyone else, Seungcheol-hyung and I. But what I’m getting at here, Hao, is that I thought I was stronger than I actually was. I thought I could fight through the pain and pretend to be bulletproof and somehow everything would just magically fix itself.”

And now Minghao finally knew where this was going, and he had to admit, Jihoon was better at this than any of the others who had tried to talk him down off this ledge he was dangling precariously off of.

“And then I ended up in an even bigger hole than when I started. I don’t want that to happen to you, Hao.”

Minghao didn’t want it to happen to him either. He wished he had something to say, some apology to filter for being so self-absorbed that he hadn’t seen a friend in pain all those years ago, but Jihoon continued without breath or pause.

“I get how frustrated you are. Dancing is your life and you want to get it back. Trust me, I get it. But if you keep going as you are, you’re more likely to lose it forever than you are to retrieve it sooner. Do you understand what I’m saying, Hao?”

There were a few seconds where Minghao just stared, silently processing all the information he’d just been overloaded with and wanting to listen to the advice and yet still wondering how he could.

But Jihoon was there, watching him with those omnipotent eyes that had been through so much and yet were still willing to share their wisdom with those who were too young and arrogant to see it for themselves. 

“Yeah,” Minghao nodded at last, glancing down at the black straps crisscrossed over his legs and, for the first time since they had appeared, not completely hating them. “I understand, hyung. I understand.”

“Good,” Jihoon approved, pushing himself out of the chair and ruffling Minghao’s hair before heading into the kitchen, throwing a quick call over his shoulder. “Dinner will be ready soon.”

Minghao settled himself back on the couch, relishing in soft cushions against his back. Everything Jihoon had just said made perfect sense. He had to be patient if he wanted to get back to where he’d been before all this.

So he plucked a pill from the bottle on the bedside table and swallowed it dry, promising himself that he would take it slower from now on.


	6. 제 5 장

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song Recommendation:  
"She Talks To Angels" by The Black Crowes

Minghao sat with his back against the wall in the dance studio, well out of the way of the rest of his members as they tried to weave various moves together to create a routine for Jihoon's new song.

Soonyoung was taking charge, coming up with most of the ideas but also incorporating the other's suggestions into the plan he was scribbling in his notebook.

Occasionally, he would remember the promise he made all those weeks ago and called over to Minghao, asking for his opinion and his ‘expertise’.

He was trying. Minghao had to give him that. But he still felt neglected, forgotten, ignored. He still felt left behind and washed up. And that hurt.

It hurt worse than the pain that seemed to be constantly gnawing at his knee cap and the bottle of oxycodone couldn't have been more welcome in his palm.

The last pill clawed its way down his throat and he stared in disbelief at the empty contents of that transparent orange cylinder. He wasn't supposed to finish them until June 25th. It was only May 2nd. 

Cursing under his breath, Minghao braced his hand on the wall behind him and folded his good leg beneath his body, relying on its feeble strength alone to push him into a vertical position.

The crutches were now a recommendation, not a necessity, and he only used them on rare occasion. He preferred to limp clumsily, the brace around his knee having been unlocked so he could bend his leg when he walked even though it was heavy and uncomfortable, but at least he didn’t have the plastic crutch handles scraping the skin off his palms.

“Hyung?” he murmured as he finally made it to where his manager was seated, planning some hectic schedule on his phone.

“You okay?” came the kindly concerned reply and Minghao was reminded how supportive this particular staff member had been of his recovery.

“Yeah…” Minghao responded, gratefully taking the chair that was offered him and lowering himself into its welcome support. “I was wondering if you could get me a refill from the pharmacist.”

He held up the empty bottle, not missing the slight crease in his manager's forehead.

“Is this the oxycodone?”

“Yeah.”

“You're finished already?”

Minghao averted his eyes in shame. Maybe he had been too generous with his top ups but he really had been in so much pain and the pills were the only thing that took it away.

“No, I just spilled some on the ground by accident.”

It was a lie but a necessary one. He was just too tired to be given a lecture on how to take his medication responsibly and that was exactly what he would get if he told the truth.

“Okay, kid,” Joochan replied, accepting the fib without question and reaching out his hand. “You got the prescription?”

Minghao handed it over, nodded his thanks and then returned his attention to the dance floor. Seokmin had jumped onto Wonwoo's back and was refusing to let go, sparking hilarity in their ranks.

They looked so happy like that. Together. Without him. They looked…complete. Like twelve was enough.

Minghao was not a crier. But he cried that night.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When the alarm sounded at 7am the following morning, Minghao wondered if he’d managed to get more than an hour of sleep. He was usually out for the count the second his head hit the pillow but, for some reason, last night had been torturous.

His skin had been itching, and still was, no matter how many times he changed his shirt and scratched at his stomach and chest. And he was sweating. All over. So much so that his blankets were virtually soaked by the time he finally managed to sit up in bed, wrinkling his nose in disgust and tossing the soiled sheets to the floor.

Everything hurt.

Every muscle screamed for pain relief as he reached for the knee brace with a groan of discomfort, his fingers fumbling with the straps before he finally managed to secure them around his leg. His matchstick leg that probably wouldn’t have been able to support a single spin when he next tried to dance.

How long had it been since the surgery? Four weeks now? Four weeks and he was still waddling around like an invalid, in too much pain to do anything more than groan and complain. The brace was due to come off in exactly ten days, so long as he kept up with the physiotherapy exercises, but then what?

All that fitness he had to gain back. All that weight he had to lose. And Jihoon had said he needed to do it slowly unless he wanted to be set back to the very beginning. But how slowly was slowly?

Minghao wanted nothing more than to be able to spring right out of bed, thunder down the stairs, slide into the kitchen and do a round of pirouettes. But alas, such things were impossible.

He was antsy and hostile the entire drive to the studio, he knew that, and he even snapped at Seungkwan. Such a crime was unforgiveable and he spent the rest of the journey doing silent penance, digging his fingernails into his thigh as punishment for telling his friend to “shut your mouth for once in your life.”

It wasn’t until he caught sight of his manager that he realised why his temper was so bad: He was in pain and he needed his medication.

“Hey, hyung?” he called out, limping to the side of the studio while the others all settled themselves around the room and started stretching. “Did you manage to get my prescription?”

Joochan’s brow furrowed for a split second before he seemed to remember as his mouth formed a small ‘O’ shape.

“Sorry, Minghao,” he said, and Minghao already felt his heart sinking. “But the pharmacist says they can’t offer refills for oxycodone. Something about reducing the risk of dependency.”

The boy stared at him, mind foggy and nerve receptors begging for release from this terrible twisting sensation that seemed to be going on beneath his skin cells. He was still sweating profusely, despite the harsh bite of the overactive air conditioning, and he wanted his pain medication.

He needed his pain medication.

“They said that if you’re still in pain, you can keep taking paracetamol but they can’t give you anymore of the same stuff.”

Joochan smiled sympathetically, giving Minghao a pat on the shoulder before Seungcheol called his name and he walked away from the boy still standing there like a lemon, trying to process what the fuck he was supposed to do without the oxy to take the edge off his agony.

“Hao!” somebody called, and he glanced up to see one of the backup dancers strutting over, grin spread wide and arms open for a hug. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in months! How are you doing, buddy?”

He enveloped the smaller body in a tight embrace that Minghao barely returned, his muscles still stiff and rigid. He liked this guy. He liked this guy ever since he’d started dancing behind them almost two years ago, but his body was already being pricked with hot needles and he was definitely not in the mood for a friendly catchup session.

“I’m fine, Daeyeol,” he bit back curtly, cringing internally at just how rude he sounded but too uncomfortable to care.

“Yeah, you sure sound it,” came the mocking reply as Daeyeol took him by the shoulders and held him at arms’ length, judging eyes roving up and down the useless body before him. “Is the leg really getting you down that bad?”

Minghao sighed. A long, drawn out sigh that at least seemed to alleviate some of the pressure that had been building up in his chest even if his knee was still throbbing persistently.

“I’m sorry,” he groaned. “I slept horribly last night and I think I’m coming down with the flu or something. Oh, and I just ran out of pain meds so I’m in a really shit mood.”

Daeyeol chuckled and Minghao couldn’t help the slight upwards curve of his lips, even in spite of himself.

“What are you on?”

“Oxycodone.”

“Ooh,” Daeyeol sucked in through his teeth, his face scrunching up in sympathy. “That stuff’s strong, brother. No wonder you’re feeling the after effects.”

Minghao frowned, mouth already half open as his mind formed a confused question, but Daeyeol beat him to it. The older boy’s grin was still wide as he slipped an arm around the younger’s skinny shoulders and pulled him closer, turning towards the wall so that their backs were to the rest of the room.

“I can get you some more if you need it. You know, as a favour between brothers.”

Such a single statement had never sounded so wondrous to Minghao’s ears as his chin hit his chest and his whole body deflated in a breathy laugh of relief. He brought his hand up to Daeyeol’s chest and said with as much sincerity as he could fit in one sentence:

“You are one incredible human being, hyung.”

“Consider it done,” Daeyeol said, taking a step away from the suspicious huddle they’d created in the corner of the room and spreading his arms wide in a gesture that said clear as day,  _ you’re welcome.  _ “My cousin’s good with handling that stuff.”

“Is he a pharmacist?” Minghao asked, eyebrows rising in interest. It was only then that he realised just how little he knew about Daeyeol’s personal life.

“Yeah. Something like that. I’ll have your delivery ready by tonight.”

Soonyoung called the beginning of rehearsals before Minghao could reply verbally and Daeyeol was dragged into the middle of the dance floor to begin the routine for  _ Hurricane  _ but the injured performer still managed to mouth his thanks halfway through the song.

He settled himself on the ground, unlocking the cage around his knee and hooking the exercise band beneath his foot, bending and straightening his leg like the physio had taught him to. It hurt, but only slightly less now that he had the assurance that a fresh dose of pain killers would be in his hand by the end of the day. 

He didn’t know what he would have done without them.


	7. 제 6 장

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song Recommendation:  
"Say It Ain't So" by Weezer

Well, all he could say was thank God for oxycodone.

The stuff was a miracle-worker. Not only did it take the edge off his pain but it also worked for the flu-like symptoms he’d been experiencing on and off for the past few weeks.

One pill down the hatch, not even the need for water, and his headaches were gone. His joints were back to normal. He didn’t sweat like he was constantly running a marathon.

Needless to say, thank God for oxycodone and for Daeyeol who provided it.

Two months since that awful day on stage when he had felt his tendons snapping beneath his skin, and there wasn’t a day that went by where someone didn’t tell him he was an inspiration.

That ugly contraption was gone from his leg, and even though he still had to wear a Velcro brace twenty-four hours a day, he felt strangely weightless. Like he could do a thousand cartwheels and dance to “Getting Closer” twenty times in a row without getting tired.

He felt invincible. So invincible that he stopped wearing the knee brace six weeks before he was supposed to. Because he felt amazing.

He wasn’t in pain. He wasn’t struggling to walk or to jump or to do any of his physio exercises. He was healed and all those doctors and therapists who were telling him to give it more time were just being overly cautious.

He was healed. It was his body. He knew it better than anyone else. And it was healed.

“The brace is off?” Seokmin cried when Minghao strutted into the dance studio, tossing his rucksack into the corner to join the congregation of personal belongings. “Already?”

“Yup.”

He took great pleasure in that reply. In the cheer that rippled through his bandmates, hands slapping him on the back as he ploughed into their ranks and took his position for the next routine. He was back. And it felt so good.

But just before Soonyoung turned on the music, Seungcheol was at Minghao’s side, a concerned hand closing around his elbow and a worried expression leaning closer so he could whisper without anyone else hearing.

“Hao, are you sure?”

“Yes,” Minghao snapped, a little more feistily than he’d intended as he ripped his arm from his leader’s grip. “The physio told me at the appointment today. I don’t need it anymore.”

“And I believe you,” Seungcheol said, quick to appease but still obligated to conduct a thorough investigation. “But doesn’t it seem a little early to you? I know you’re desperate to get back as quickly as possible but you’ve come so far and I don’t want to see you screw all that up because you couldn’t wait any longer.”

There was some tiny little voice in the back of Minghao’s head that told him to listen to his hyung. That told him it was probably a good idea not to dance flat out the same day he had taken the brace off.

And he didn’t need to tell Seungcheol that particular choice had been made by him and not the professionals.

But it was his body. And it was healed.

“I said,” he hissed back, a fleck of spit sparking off the tip of his tongue and hitting his leader in the face. But he was too defensive to care about the grotesque display of disrespect for someone who had only ever showed him kindness. “That I don’t need it anymore.”

The music started barely a second later, and Seungcheol was forced to move away from his little brother as the dance began.

Minghao felt guilty the moment he thought about what he’d just done, but he couldn’t focus on that. He had to focus on the dance. On showing all his members that he – Minghao – was back and ready to take the world by storm.

And what a storm he was.

It was true what they said: you never know what you’ve got until it’s gone. Minghao had taken his dancing for granted, believing that he would always be able to do it.

Of course, one day he would have to lay down his legend and throw in the towel but he had never expected it to come when he was still so young.

And now that he had it back, he was never going to let it go again.

He felt free when his body moved just how he wanted it to, flowing as purely and perfectly as water. He felt electric and powerful and just the mere relief at being back where he belonged almost brought him to tears halfway through the song.

He could feel Seungcheol’s eyes on him, constantly checking for any sign of weakness or discomfort, but he knew there would be none. He had never felt better. He wasn’t as strong as he once had been, sure, but he was good enough to keep up. And he would only get better from here.

There was no instability or vulnerability for Seungcheol to latch onto and use to stop him doing what he loved. There was no excuse to sit him at the side of the dance floor for another two months. There was nothing. Because he was healed.

And he _ was. _ He _ was _healed. Until the fourth song they ran through. He wasn’t healed after that.

Wonwoo had been right next to him when it happened, and he said he’d heard the snap. He’d actually heard muscle tissue and ligament split apart beneath skin and surrounding bone. He’d heard it and Minghao had felt it and he realised he wasn’t invincible after all.

He hit the ground with a scream of agony, fingers clutching at his knee and eyes screwed shut as all hell broke loose around him.

There were voices, hands, uninvited touches and concerned questions and all Minghao could do was turn his face into the polished floorboards, allowing his tears to drip onto the varnish.

He had been too cocky. Too arrogant. He should have known. Someone should have stopped him.

Seungcheol should have told him he was moving too fast too quickly. The physio should have outlined the risks of taking the brace off too soon and pushing himself harder than he’d been advised.

Except, they had all done those things. Seungcheol had told him. The physio had outlined them. They had tried to stop him and he hadn’t listened. Because he was headstrong and stupid and pathetic and weak. Because he couldn’t have just waited a little longer.

“Hao,” came the voice in his ear, accompanying the hand that was stroking the hair out of his face. “Hao, sit up and put your arm around me so I can pick you up.”

It was Seungcheol. Of course it was Seungcheol. Being the perfect person and the perfect leader who no one could ever fault because he was just so fucking perfect all the fucking time. And here he was, taunting Minghao for not listening to him. Humiliating him further.

“Get off me,” he sobbed, swatting at the fingers massaging his scalp. “Get the fuck off me and leave me alone!”

He didn’t want their help. He didn’t want to accept the hands they were reaching out to him because then he would be admitting his failure and their success.

He didn’t want them here, gawping at him with pity and smugness all rolled up into one infuriating bundle. He wanted to be alone. Just him and his ACL.

“I said leave me alone!” he screamed so loudly he thought his throat might tear, but at least it did the trick.

The shadows cast over him vanished, the hands left his body, the voices dissipated. And they left him. Just like he’d told them to.

And he liked it that way because now he was free to sob his heart out on this studio floor until he had finally regained his composure and figured out what he was supposed to do next.

“Hey, buddy.”

His first instinct was to scream once more, but then he recognised the voice. It wasn’t Seungcheol or Jeonghan or Jun or any of his members. It wasn’t even Joochan.

“Daeyeol …” he whimpered, opening his glistening eyes and blinking up at the sympathetic face looming over him. “I fucked up. I fucked everything up.”

The dancer’s arm slid beneath his back and levered him into a sitting position, handing him a tissue and shushing when Minghao hissed at the jostling of his knee.

He dabbed pathetically at his dribbling face, sucking through his teeth each time a fresh wave of pain ricocheted up his leg.

“It’s just you and me, kiddo,” Daeyeol soothed, rubbing a hand between his shoulder blades in an attempt to provide comfort. “I told everyone else to get out. Once you’re calm, I’ll drive you to the hospital and they’ll check you out.”

Minghao nodded, swiping his sweaty fringe out of his eyes. “I ruined everything.”

“Here.”

He looked up, frowning at the sight of the cigarette dancing in front of his vision, a beige little cylinder with a white tip and a multitude of diseases encased in that papery shell, and shook his head.

“I don’t smoke, hyung.”

“Trust me,” Daeyeol smirked. “It helps when you feel like shit.”

And Minghao did feel like shit. The shittiest shit to ever be shitted. He was in pain, he was distraught and he definitely wasn’t ready to get up off this floor just yet.

His life was already over. His dancing career had been mutilated just as brutally as the soft tissue in his leg. So what did he have to lose?

“Thanks,” he muttered as he took the offering, holding it steady so Daeyeol could bring the lighter close enough to ignite the tip. “How do I …?”

“You stick it in your mouth and breathe in,” the older boy laughed, miming the act to demonstrate as he extinguished the lighter and pocketed it once more. “It might make you cough a little since it’s your first time but the after affect is incredible.”

Minghao trusted him because he had no reason not to. Daeyeol had been his rock these last few weeks, rustling up the oxy whenever he needed a refill and handing it over to him without a demand for payment or gratitude.

Daeyeol had been more supportive and understanding than all of his band members put together.

He brought the stub to his lips and inhaled, long and deep, the ashy aroma engulfing his senses and causing him to splutter horrifically for several moments. And then he got the feeling. That amazing, incredible feeling.

The warmth, the numbness, the overwhelming sensation of floating. It was inordinately comforting, and he took another drag without a moment’s hesitation, ignoring Daeyeol’s affectionate chuckle from beside him as he allowed his mind to succumb to the nicotine’s power.

It felt good.

“Alright, kid,” Daeyeol finally interrupted. “We need to get you to a hospital and get that knee sorted once and for all, okay?”

“Okay,” Minghao consented, the cigarette remaining in his hand even as he looped his arms around Daeyeol’s neck and permitted the taller boy to heft him off the floor. “Don’t tell any of the others that I smoked, though. They won’t approve.”

He heard the snort of agreement and felt the chest he was pressed against flinch slightly in Daeyeol’s mirth before the answer rang loud and clear. “Your secret’s safe with me, kid.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this isn't my best work but can I just ask if anyone's still reading this?


	8. 제 7 장

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys so much for all the support on the last chapter. I really was starting to lose confidence in this story and its ability but you put my mind at rest so thank you, thank you, thank you!!
> 
> Song Recommendation:  
"It's Been A While" by Staind

“We did everything right, didn’t we?”

Seungcheol looked up from where he was sitting at the kitchen table, half asleep, with his face in his hands, to see Jeonghan standing at the sink. 

He was staring out the window with a blank expression on his face, as though he wasn’t really seeing the overgrown garden Wonwoo had neglected to prune in the last few weeks.

“What do you mean?”

“Did we do everything right?” Jeonghan clarified, turning around so he could face his leader, leaning backwards on the countertop with the air of a boy who had reached the peak of exhaustion. “Did we not support him enough? Should we have jumped in sooner? Been firmer? Were we stupid not to notice how badly he was struggling?”

Seungcheol gave a sigh, raking his hands through his hair and pawing sleepily at his puffy eyes that hadn’t seen more than a couple of hours of darkness in the last few days. Now he finally knew what Jeonghan was talking about.

Minghao had needed another surgery, and this one had been far more intense. They’d cut open his leg and pulled out one of his healthy ligaments to replace the one that had been mutilated by too much exertion too soon after the first operation.

It had truly broken him. Every sliver of hope they had managed to build up in him over the last four months had just circled the drain and disappeared.

He stopped talking to them, only responding in curt comments and sarcastic sentences. He never came out of his room, remaining stretched out over his bed with his leg propped up on a pillow, that hideous black brace back on his knee. 

The only person he truly connected with was Daeyeol, the dancer popping in to see him at least once a week.

And he smoked. Constantly.

Every time one of them stepped over that threshold to bring him some food or to remind him to shower or do his physio exercises, they were hit with the full force of an atmosphere that was more ash than it was air. 

They opened windows but it never seemed to help and no matter how many times they had asked Minghao to stop, he had refused.

“I don’t think,” Seungcheol started, his words muffled due to how low his head was hanging on his shoulders. “That it matters what we should have or could have done. It’s happened now and the only thing we can do is try to fix it.”

“How?” Jeonghan cried, throwing his hands in the air in frustration. “We’ve already tried everything. He won’t talk to us, he won’t see a counsellor, he even blackmailed Chan into buying cigarettes with the money he stole from Shua’s wallet. I’ve talked to Daeyeol-hyung and he said that he can’t get through to him either.”

Seungcheol just hummed his acknowledgement. He was too tired to come up with some miracle solution to the hole they seemed to have tumbled into without any idea how to climb out. He, too, had spoken to Daeyeol but it had given him no result. Just further questions.

Like why Minghao had suddenly gotten so close with their backup dancer.

“I feel like something has to give,” Jeonghan whispered. “Like something really awful has to happen so that he finally snaps out of it.”

Seungcheol said nothing. Looking back, Seungcheol wished he’d said something.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was almost five in the morning when Minghao took his sixth cigarette of the night. Jun had asked that the window be cracked but it was cold outside so the younger boy had closed it once his hyung had fallen asleep in the bed across the room.

He didn’t really understand why Jun hadn’t gone somewhere else. Maybe he felt sorry for him. Maybe he was worried he would kill himself if he was left alone for too long. Maybe he was just stupid like that. 

But whatever he was, he still curled up in that bed every night even though he hated the smell of cigarettes and the smoke made him cough like there was no tomorrow.

He stayed. And it was almost enough to make Minghao feel grateful. Almost.

But he didn’t feel anything. Just despair. And depression. And uselessness. 

So he smoked and he took the oxy that Daeyeol brought for him and it was the only thing that took the edge off his pain. That made him feel like everything was going to be okay as long as he was drugged and high and floating.

He lay back against the cushions and watched the column of ashy grey dust spiral into the air as he slowly let it escape his lungs. 

The moon was shining at just the right angle and it almost looked beautiful, the way the particles danced and dipped in that single ray of light.

And then Jun coughed, and Minghao groaned in irritation, rolling onto his other side so that he wouldn’t have to watch his hyung struggle into a sitting position and grope pathetically for the water bottle on the bedside table.

“Hao …” he spluttered through rattling breaths. “Hao, please … Op … Open the window …”

Minghao ignored him. He didn’t have the right to tell him what to do. He wasn’t his father or his brother or anyone who held any responsibility over him. He was just his bandmate, someone he used to hug in happier times. 

Minghao didn’t have those people in his life anymore, and he didn’t want them back.

“Hao …” Jun gasped. “Hao … Please …”

“If it bothers you that much then go sleep somewhere else!” Minghao snapped, still refusing to roll over as he took another puff of his tobacco stick and spat the smoke at the opposite wall. “No one’s asking you to be here. No one even wants you here.”

He almost laughed with relief when he heard Jun staggering out of bed, his footfalls heavy against the floor and his breaths even more strangled and constricted. 

Finally, his hyung was getting some sense into that ridiculously thick head of his. Finally, he was accepting the fact that the Minghao he used to know was not the Minghao he knew now.

Then he heard the thump. A really, really loud thump.

“Hyung?”

He sat up, extinguishing his cigarette in the overflowing ashtray on his bedside table. 

He could hear Jun, just outside the room, wheezing like he was trying to breathe through a straw after holding his breath for five minutes.

“Hyung?”

There was no reply, and now Minghao was starting to get nervous. Jun was surely joking, trying to scare him into throwing away his cigarettes and quitting smoking altogether. 

But Jun didn’t sound like he was joking. Jun sounded like he was dying.

“Hyung, are you okay?”

Standing up was a bitch. He could just about bend his leg so long as the brace didn’t jam or get stuck but it was heavy and lugging that bulky limb around was just plain annoying. But something was wrong and he didn’t like it.

“Jun-hyung?”

He froze when he reached the doorway, too shocked to move or speak or even breathe as he looked down at Jun on the ground. 

And Jun looked back up at him with his eyes streaming tears and his hands clawing at his chest and the heels of his feet digging into the carpet and his lips turning blue.

He was mouthing something. Something that looked terrifyingly similar to the word, _ “help”. _But Minghao couldn’t move, and it had nothing to do with the straps that immobilised his leg.

Right in front of him, Jun’s head rocked back against the carpet and lolled to one side. 

His feet stopped kicking, his arms came to rest on his chest and his eyes fluttered closed, but his mouth remained open as it emitted those awful grating wheezes that sounded like metal on metal.

And Minghao couldn’t move.

He didn’t know how long he stood there, stock still, like a dumbstruck lemon, listening to Jun’s limp body fighting for breath and wondering if there was any way this could be his fault. 

If maybe he had smoked one cigarette too many or had kept the window closed too long. If maybe he had caused whatever attack this was.

“JUN!”

Minghao felt the scream in his bones, ricocheting through his paralysed body as the footsteps pounded down the landing and Soonyoung threw himself on the ground beside the corpse-like figure of his best friend.

“Jun!” he was calling, taking Jun’s face in his hands and shaking. “Jun? Jun! Jun, wake up!”

There was no response. And it was like Minghao wasn’t even there.

“SEUNGCHEOL! JEONGHAN! SEUNGCHEOL! HELP ME!”

The doors banged open less than a second later, the two eldest taking only a moment to acknowledge the scene in front of them before Jeonghan was on the ground, heaving Jun into his arms and Seungcheol was diving back into his room for a phone.

“Jun?” Jeonghan was calling, his voice rising at least an octave in his sheer panic at the lack of response he was getting. “Jun? Jun, baby, come on!”

Jeonghan had never said that before. That pet name was reserved for Chan and only Chan, and the fact that he was breaking that tradition showed just how terrified he was.

“What were you doing?” Soonyoung screamed, his hands planting themselves in Minghao’s chest and shoving him against the wall, almost sending him tumbling. “Were you enjoying yourself? Good movie, was it? Why the fuck weren’t you helping him?”

Minghao just stared back at him, mouth opening and shutting like a goldfish in his numb disbelief at the events that were occurring around him. 

He was spared an answer, or another attack from Soonyoung, by the sight of Jun writhing in Jeonghan’s arms as he hacked up blood all over his face.

“Oh, God …” Seokmin’s voice came from somewhere. “Oh, God … Oh, God …”

Seungcheol’s yelling increased in ferocity, the phone practically stapled to his ear as Jeonghan wrapped an arm around Jun’s shoulders and heaved him into a sitting position so that he wouldn’t choke on his own innards.

And Minghao could not move.

His best friend, the one person he used to think of as a brother, was coughing up blood right in front of him and he could not move.

Because he knew that this was his fault.


	9. 제 8 장

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song Recommendation:  
"Medicine" by Daughter

Seven hours. Twenty-three minutes. Thirty-nine seconds.

That’s how long they had to wait – Minghao, Jeonghan and Soonyoung – before Joochan came to give them the news they had been praying for. 

Whether it be good or bad, Minghao just wanted to know. He wanted to know whether he had killed his best friend or just made him seriously ill.

Jeonghan and Soonyoung stood up the second the manager entered the waiting room but Minghao couldn’t. 

His leg hurt too much, and he wasn’t sure if he would be able to support his weight with how badly he was trembling.

“Tell us,” Soonyoung whispered, barely even audible, and Joochan gave a great sigh of resignation before opening his mouth and delivering the information that sent chills of guilt-stricken horror down Minghao’s spine.

“There was a problem with the platelets in his blood,” he reported solemnly. “That, coupled with some kind of damage to his arteries, caused a clot in his lung. That was why he was struggling to breathe. He was literally drowning in his own blood.”

Minghao swallowed the vomit that crept up his throat, not permitting himself to show weakness when Jun was the one so very, very sick.

“But he’s okay, right?” Jeonghan prodded. “He’s … He’s okay now?”

Joochan’s eyes flickered down to Minghao before returning to the older two. 

“They lost him twice in the operating room. The doctor said that the damage to his arteries was so severe that they had to do a bypass surgery or else he would have had a heart attack. A stroke wasn’t out of the question either.”

Lost him. Operating room. Damage. So severe. Bypass surgery. Heart attack. Stroke. And it was all his fault.

“He’s in the ICU and Seungcheol’s allowed to stay with him but only because … um … Well …”

“Because they don’t think he’ll make it,” Soonyoung finished thickly, oblivious to Minghao’s sharp intake of breath from behind him. “Isn’t that right? They don’t think he’s going to survive the night.”

Minghao looked up at Joochan, begging him, pleading with him to say that Soonyoung was wrong. That Jun was going to be fine. That Jun was going to wake up and be able to see the next sunset, eat another ice cream, dance to another song. 

Because Jun couldn't not be here. The world wasn’t that cruel.

“The next twenty-four hours will determine whether he lives or dies,” Joochan agreed, and Minghao felt like the earth fell on top of him, crushing him beneath its mighty weight.

“Did … Did they say what caused it?” Jeonghan whispered tentatively, his voice hitched and cracked from trying so hard not to cry. “Was he sick? Were there any warning signs we should have seen?”

Joochan looked conflicted, as though he wasn’t quite sure the information he was withholding was safe to convey, and Minghao was not oblivious to the nervous side glances his manager kept giving him. 

He knew. He knew it was his fault.

“The doctor said something about secondary exposure to smoke.”

There it was: The most incriminating evidence of all. The rock-solid proof that Minghao had been the one behind Jun’s critical condition at this moment.

“The damage that was done to his lungs and his heart … They said they’ve never seen a case so severe in someone who doesn’t smoke.”

There were two beats of silence where Minghao could not breathe, before Soonyoung’s hands were fisted in his T-Shirt and he was being slammed into the back of his chair. 

His hyung’s body was pressed right up against his, eyes streaming with grief and face twisted in anger.

“What did you do?” he screamed in his little brother’s face, shaking him to prove just how distraught he was. “How many cigarettes were you smoking while he was sleeping in the same room as you? How many gases and fumes and poisons did he breathe in because you refused to quit even though we begged you to?”

The first few tears slithered from Minghao’s eyelids and he glanced up at Jeonghan, silently pleading for his hyung to help him, but the second eldest looked lifeless. 

He was just a shadow, standing there with his gaze fixated on the floor as the ruckus roared on around him.

“I …” Minghao choked, his chest beginning to tighten with ill-concealed panic. “I told him to leave … I told him he didn’t have to stay …”

“And do you know why he did?” Soonyoung bellowed, finally relinquishing his hold of the boy and ramming a fist into the wall above his head. “Do you know why he stayed in that room with you even though it was killing him?”

Minghao shook his head, sobbing and terrified and borderline hysterical.

“Because he didn’t want you to think he was abandoning you!”

And that was Jun on paper. Selfless. Selfless to the core. Selfless to his bones. Selflessness was painted into his every pore, his heart pumped it around his body. 

Only now, Minghao had poisoned that heart and along with that, he had extinguished that selflessness from the world.

“I’m sorry …”

“Oh!” Soonyoung cried out, tone dripping with bitter sarcasm. “Oh, you’re sorry! Well, then that’s okay! I’ll just go and tell Jun that he can wake up now and live the rest of his life because you’re sorry!”

“Soonyoung,” Joochan finally intercepted, resting a restraining hand on the raging boy’s shoulder. “That’s enough.”

Minghao was thankful, but at the same time, he noticed how Joochan wasn’t defending him. He wasn’t telling Soonyoung that it hadn’t been his fault and there was no way he could have known what would happen. And Jeonghan wasn’t either.

That was the most painful thing of all.

“Jun needs you right now,” Joochan was saying, but Minghao knew he wasn’t talking to him. “I don’t know how much time he has left so you need to go and hold his hand and tell him you love him and pray to God that he hears you and manages to pull himself through this. I’ll go back to the dorm and fetch the others. You all deserve to be here right now.”

“Not him,” Soonyoung spat, his irate eyes burning holes in Minghao’s inferior body. “I don’t want him anywhere near Jun. And if he dies … I want him charged with manslaughter.”

Minghao couldn’t stay there anymore. 

He couldn’t be in the presence of someone who used to give him cuddles and kisses and tell him he was handsome and brilliant and destined for greatness but now was looking at him with nothing less than pure undiluted hatred.

Soonyoung hated him. Soonyoung actually hated him. And now the others would too. So would Jun. If he was awake. If he had the ability to wake. If he was ever going to wake again.

He half wished that someone – Joochan if not Jeonghan – would follow him when he staggered from the hospital building, his brace weighing him down and his chest feeling like it was about to burst with the pressure those iron bands were putting on his ribcage. 

But no one came after him. No one wanted to comfort him or make sure he was okay.

His phone somehow found its way to his hand as he found a remote spot hidden behind a skip and sunk to the ground, his leg sticking out awkwardly with its black plastic prison. 

He was sobbing, hyperventilating, panicking, and he could only think of one thing that would soothe that agony.

Not cigarettes. Never cigarettes. Never ever, ever, ever again. But oxy. That would take the pain away. Oxy always took the pain away.

“Hey, kid, haven’t heard from you in a few days. You doing okay?”

“Daeyeol-hyung … I’m at the hospital.”

“What? What happened? Are you okay?”

“I’m … I’m fine but … I need more … Please, hyung, I need you to bring me some.”

“What, oxy?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, I’ll be there in fifteen.”

“Thank you.”

Daeyeol was the only one he could count on now. Daeyeol was the only one who didn’t either want him dead or in jail. Daeyeol was his only friend now.

And the oxy, of course.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter isn't up to my usual standards, I know, but I really appreciate all the love and support that I received over the past few days so I wanted to get this out. Thank you for sticking with me xx


	10. 제 9 장

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song Recommendation:  
"Shattered" by Trading Yesterday

**MAJOR TRIGGER WARNING!!!**

**PLEASE DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE SENSITIVE TO SERIOUS MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES**

He was still crouched behind that skip, sobbing into the cuff of his hoodie sleeve as he tried to forget the look on Soonyoung’s face as he had told him he was not to go anywhere near Jun. 

He understood the need to protect somebody so fragile from the very person who had reduced them to that state in the first place, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt like hell.

“Minghao?”

He heard Daeyeol’s voice approaching, footfalls soft and apprehensive as he struggled with the internal decision of whether or not he would make things worse by initiating contact. 

But Minghao raised his head, displaying puffy pink eyes and dried tear tracks crusted into the skin of his cheeks and chin.

“Jesus, kid,” Daeyeol muttered as he reached out a hand and helped the snivelling boy to his feet, making sure he was careful not to let him put too much weight on his leg. “You’ve really been through the mill, haven’t you?”

Minghao nodded pathetically, individual droplets of sweat rolling down his back underneath his T-Shirt and every single bone in his body throbbing painfully from the curled up position he had remained in for so long.

“Do you have it?” he whispered, his eyes imploring the older boy to nod in affirmation and produce the pills from a jacket pocket. “I need it right now, hyung. I … I need the pain to go away.”

“Hao …” Daeyeol gave a sigh of regret and Minghao felt his stomach flipping. He had to have it. Now. It hurt too much. “My cousin found out that I was dosing you up without asking for payment and he got really pissed at me.”

“I …” Minghao stuttered, wanting to say he was sorry for being such a burden, for causing Daeyeol so much trouble, but at the same time,  _ needing  _ to have those little sherbet oblongs in his hand.

“I’ve got some with me,” Daeyeol reassured him, squeezing his upper arm with a sympathetic smile. “But I’m going to need you to start paying me, Hao. I’m sorry, but my cousin has to make a living and you’re practically leeching the stuff off him.”

Minghao gulped. He had his wallet on him but he knew it was barren except for a few bills he’d stolen from Seungcheol when the leader’s back had been turned. He knew it would be expensive, and he wasn’t sure he would be able to meet the requirements.

“How much do you need?”

“ ₩ 200,000,000.”

“What?” Minghao choked, his jaw dropping to the ground in his horrified disbelief. “That’s … You can’t … I don’t have that much on me.”

“Then I can’t give it to you, Hao,” Daeyeol said, and he really did look sorry but Minghao didn’t care if he was filled with all the regret in the world. He needed those pills. He  _ needed  _ them. “That’s already 50,000 less than we usually charge and business is business.”

Minghao gaped at him. “What kind of business are you running? What kind of chemist sells pain killers for  ₩ 200,000,000?”

There was a moment where Daeyeol just stared, eyebrows furrowed in confusion before he took a step backwards, furthering the distance between him and this desperate little boy, and admitted what he’d thought Minghao had known all along.

“Hao, we run a drug cartel. You know … crack? Weed? Heroin? I thought you knew that.”

It was then that Minghao realised just how stupid he’d been.

“Please …” he stuttered, trying to keep himself together just long enough to get what he needed and then he could run for his life and never look back. “This is the last time, hyung. I promise. I just … I really need those drugs. I’ll never ask for anything again. Please, hyung, I’m begging here.”

He would find another supplier. He had to. He never meant to get mixed up in something like this and now that he knew just how deep in he was, he could start swimming to the surface. And then he would find another supplier. It didn’t matter if he had to hold a doctor hostage until he wrote him a prescription.

He was getting those drugs.

“Minghao, I already said I can’t let you off again. It’s not fair on ---”

Minghao had no idea what came over him. One minute, he’s a trembling mess in an alleyway behind Seoul General Hospital and the next, he’s tackling his best friend – his only friend – to the ground and punching every single part of him he could reach.

“Just give it to me!” he was screaming, unaware how his throat could produce such a feral sound. “Just give it to me, you son of a bitch!”

Daeyeol was pushing up with his hands, trying to roll that skinny body off him but Minghao was like a wild animal, too desperate and too vicious to be moved. 

The blows were landing left and right, in the ribs and in the face, and Daeyeol was grunting in pain with each landing a punch made against his flesh.

“Okay!” he cried out as a particularly brutal attack launched for his throat. “Okay, just take it. Take it and get the fuck off me!”

The bag was waving in front of him, a tiny little plastic thing packed to bursting with tiny white capsules, and Minghao grabbed onto his lifeline like it was his only remaining tether to sanity. 

He scrambled off Daeyeol, ripped open the seal and swallowed two pills dry. It would take a minute for the effects to kick in but at least now he knew that release was coming.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Minghao,” Daeyeol was groaning, propping himself up on his elbow and nursing his bruised jaw and bloody lip. “You’re completely hooked.”

Hooked. That word struck a chord, somewhere deep inside. There was something bad about it. Something that reminded Minghao of a million stories he’d seen on the news, always producing a disgusted curl of his lip as he dismissed those useless weaklings for their inability to control their urges.

But now he understood everything.

Because they’d been hooked.

Hooked on drugs.

Just like him. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Minghao wanted to curl up into a ball with his legs pulled right into his chest and his back wedged firmly into a corner so that he could feel as small as possible. As insignificant as he truly was. Because the tinier he made his body, the less guilt would be able to cram itself inside.

The others were with Jun for what could possibly be the last time in their lives.

He had been banished back to the dorm, Joochan dropping him off with an exhausted order to behave or else feel the wrath of an entire entertainment company coming down on top of him.

But he wanted to be at the hospital, to hold his hyung’s hand and tell him how sorry he was before God decided whether he wanted to pick another flower before it had even had a chance to properly bloom. 

He had fucked up so spectacularly that there had better be a Guinness World Record with his name on it or he might as well just stop living right here and right now.

His knee was a mess of mangled tendons and damaged muscle tissue and he knew he would be lucky if he ever performed a single dance move again. He never thought that the end of his career would be the very last thing on his mind.

Because now he had gone one step further. Now he might have killed his best friend, and lost another eleven in the process. 

If Jun died … He didn’t even want to think about it. He couldn’t imagine the pain, the guilt, the trauma they would all go through as the fans slowly found out and then questions were sent firing and they were all scrutinised by reporters for signs of nervous breakdowns.

And he couldn’t imagine a life without Wen Junhui. It was just too awful to fathom.

And finally, as if he hadn’t already made enough mistakes, as if the universe was playing some cruel joke on him, as if he didn’t have enough sins to atone for when the devil finally dragged him down to its fiery hole of well-deserved torture and despair, he had affiliated himself with a drug dealer.

Multiple times.

He should have known. He should have seen it. He should have asked questions rather than just taking the pills he was handed with stupid, naïve, blind trust. Like a child. So stupid and ignorant. 

He had allowed himself to dig deeper and deeper and deeper into the hole that may very well become his grave, and now the dirt was cascading on top of him, burying him alive, and he had no way to escape.

The pain was unbearable. Searing. White hot. Stabbing. Shooting. Aching. Throbbing. Dull. Sharp. Every single word doctors asked you to use when describing your internal torment fit perfectly with the kind of agony Minghao was experiencing.

It was just everywhere. In his legs, in his arms, in his chest and his head and especially in his knee. There was only one thing he knew of that would put that to a stop.

That little orange bottle of circular white discs was the only thing he could truly rely on now that his members hated his guts and wanted him in prison – or dead – and when the media got wind of everything that had happened, the world would feel the same. 

These pills were his lifeline to an existence he wasn’t even sure he wanted anymore.

But they stopped the pain.

So he took one.

But it wasn’t working fast enough.

So he took another one.

And it still hurt.

So another.

And another.

And another.

And another.

And another.

And …


	11. 제 10 장

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song Recommendation:  
"Why" by Rascal Flatts

“I can’t do this.”

Joshua looked up from the bag he was packing in the living room, his jacket still encasing his body and his shoes still on his feet as he prepared himself to leap straight back into the car waiting for him in the road at the bottom of the drive.

Mingyu was hovering in the doorway, his eyes welling up and his gaze transferring from one mundane object to another, as though they somehow elicited fear in his heart. And Joshua understood exactly what he was thinking.

That was Jun’s favourite spot on the couch.

That was the coat hanger Jun was always banging his head against.

That was the rug Jun had once thrown up on after drinking too much Soju.

That was Jun’s coat.

Those were Jun’s shoes.

The photograph Jun took.

The old-fashioned stereo Jun refused to throw out.

Every single artefact in this godforsaken building had Jun’s fingerprints fused onto its surface and now that he was hovering in the balance between life and death, it was as if his face was plastered everywhere as it taunted them with a smile they might never see again.

Joshua wished he could say something meaningful and comforting, but he knew that if he opened his mouth, the tears would start streaming and then he wouldn’t be able to stop for anything. 

He would cry until judgement day, offering up every last droplet of salt in his body in the hopes that some holy deity would take them in exchange for Jun’s life.

But that wasn’t going to happen. So he just went back to the things he was shoving into the duffel bag – Jun’s favourite cushion, a fluffy blanket, the sweater he wore almost every day – preparing for the long, long, long night they would have ahead of them. 

“Where’s the book hyung was reading?” Mingyu muttered, head turning this way and that in his numbed and lifeless search for his goal.

“What?”

“The book,” the kid clarified thickly, swatting at the tears on his face. “He said it was the best thing he’d ever read. He … He said he always read it before he went to sleep. He … He should … He should have his book with him or … or he won’t … he won’t be able to sleep if he doesn’t have his book.”

“Okay,” Joshua soothed, dumping the bag on the ground and crossing the room in three strides to take a hold of Mingyu’s trembling body and pull him into a bone-crushing hug. “Okay, Mingyu. Okay. I’ll get the book. It’s okay.”

“No,” Mingyu interrupted harshly, pulling away from the embrace and starting towards the stairs with a kind of devastated determination in his tone. “I can do it. I … I want to do it.”

Joshua watched him go, his huge and yet terrifyingly fragile body stalking up the steps towards the place where the blood was probably still splattered over the carpet in dried scarlet splodges.

“Minghao’s up there,” he called out to the retreating back, not surprised when he received no reply. “If he’s sleeping, don’t disturb him.”

He went back to packing, half an ear open for the sounds of Mingyu’s shuffling footsteps on the landing above.

He truly, really, honestly, had no idea how he felt about Minghao.

He wasn’t calling for his blood like Soonyoung was, packed to bursting with hatred and vengefulness and determined to get the kid kicked off the face of the PLEDIS universe. But he wasn’t standing up for the boy either. Not like Seungcheol was.

_ “It’s my fault for leaving it so late,” _ the leader had said. _ “It’s my fault for not noticing he was sick. For not making him move out of that room. For not realising how badly Minghao was spiralling and for being too cowardly to step in.” _

Joshua just wanted his family back. All thirteen of them.

“HYUNG! HYUNG, HELP ME! HYUNG, PLEASE HELP ME! OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD!”

Feet had never moved so fast. A heart had never lurched so violently. Fear had never been so prevalent in a human being than it was in Joshua Hong as he pounded up the stairs with all the ferocity and desperation of a starving hunting dog.

And when he got to the top, he thought that this was all a joke. That the world was laughing at them, enjoying the misery it was creating with its plot twists and terrifying jump scares and it’s … it’s unfairness. 

It was so unfair. All of this was so unfair.

“He’s not breathing …” Mingyu whispered from where he was crouched beside Minghao’s body on the bedroom floor. “Hyung, what do I do? He’s not breathing!”

That was a little boy splayed out over the carpet, his face the same colour as a sheet of paper and his lips tinged blue from lack of oxygen. He was so tiny. So thin and spindly and delicate.

And it was only at that very moment that Joshua noticed the yellowish tint to that little boy’s fingernails, a pigmented reminder of just how many cigarettes he had been smoking within these four walls. And the ribs that were protruding from underneath his shirt and the jeans that were hanging off his thighs.

They had missed it. They had all missed it.

“Call …” Joshua croaked as he took a step forwards and his legs gave out, crumpling beneath him and forcing him to his knees with a shuddering crash. “Call 119.”

His hands were trembling as they scrabbled at Minghao’s neck and confirmed what Mingyu had already concluded: that little boy was not breathing. And neither did he have a heartbeat.

“Why?” he whispered down at that paper figurine. “Why? Why? Why? WHY!”

He grabbed for the empty pill bottle lying discarded on the carpet and hurled it at the wall so violently that it shattered on impact, before returning his attention to the body he was shaking with all his might. As if he could somehow rock the spirit of that little boy – his little boy – into the lifeless limbs.

“WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS, YOU FUCKING COWARD!”

Minghao was not allowed to leave them. Not like this. Not with Jun on his deathbed. He was not allowed. Not under Joshua Hong’s watch.

“You bastard,” he hissed under his breath as he planted his hands in the centre of Minghao’s chest and started pummelling with all his might. “You cowardly, selfish, fucking piece of shit!”

Mingyu was sobbing unintelligible words into a speaker that blasted urgent orders and instructions, but Joshua wasn’t listening. Joshua was saving this life whether its owner liked it or not.

He bowed over the body, pinching its stone-cold nose and inflating its lungs with his own breath before resuming the compressions, his teeth gritted and his eyes pooling tears so rapidly that he could no longer see the face of his little boy beneath him.

“I don’t care what you’ve done!” he growled through gritted teeth, sweat starting to bead beneath his brow from the physical exertion but his mind telling him that stopping would mean letting Minghao die. “I don’t fucking care, you little shit, because no one gets to die like this! Jun does not get to wake up and find out that you offed yourself because of him! You do not get to do that to him! Or Seungcheol! Or Jeonghan! Or any of us! You do not get to leave us because that is not what we signed up for, Xu Minghao!”

Where the words were coming from, he had no idea. But they were keeping him motivated, keeping him angry and determined and sparking some fuse within him that would refuse to give up until a medical professional called the time of death.

“We did not train for years to end like this! We did not go through all kinds of shit and get humiliated on live TV and have our personal information scattered to all four corners of the earth and have thousands of people call us fake and pathetic and talentless for you to fucking kill yourself!”

Another two breaths. More compressions. Tears. Shouting. Pleading. Begging. Screaming. And somewhere along the lines, all that anger Joshua had managed to inject into his words as he crushed Minghao’s heart with the kid’s own ribs just turned to desperation.

“Please don’t die!” he sobbed as he dipped for another sloppy round of mouth to mouth. “Please don’t die, Minghao, please don’t die!”

They had let him get to this point. They had abandoned him with his own thoughts, pushing him away, ignoring him, neglecting him. And he had finally reached his limit. The line had been crossed and Xu Minghao had given up on the one thing human beings existed to do: breathe.

A phosphorescent arm planted itself in Joshua’s chest and shoved him aside. He fell back against the bed with a strangled sob as he watched the medics converging on that little boy. His little boy.

They were calm and collected as they pressed the plastic muzzle to Minghao’s face, rubbery purple fingers pumping a bag that was supposed to act in the place of a pair of lungs that weren’t working anymore. They ripped open his shirt and placed the stickers on his pale chest before electricity forced his fragile little body to arch upwards in a violent spasm.

“What did he take?” the question kept repeating itself in the back of Joshua’s mind and it was only when he felt the latex gloves gripping his face that he realised the paramedic was talking to him. “Do you know what he took? Sir, we need to know.”

But Joshua didn’t know. He had smashed the pill bottle and now he didn’t know. But Mingyu did.

“Oxycodone. He’s addicted to oxycodone.”

Mingyu had known. Mingyu had known all along and Joshua hadn’t. Joshua had been blind. Joshua should have known. But Joshua hadn’t. And Mingyu had.

They were rolling up Minghao’s sleeve, exposing a matchstick arm with vibrant blue veins sticking up against sugary skin, and tightening the tourniquet around a bicep that had never really been there in the first place.

“Naloxone going in.”

Joshua had to close his eyes when he saw the syringe shrinking in length and that thin silver stick disappearing into his little boy’s arm. 

He hated needles. Minghao hated needles too. They all hated needles and yet a needle was apparently what was going to save a life even though they were sharp and pointy and looked more likely to kill than heal.

“Come on, kid. Come on. You can do it.”

There was a choking gasp, a strangled gurgle of phlegm buried in a throat that had closed up around its own trachea. 

Minghao’s body contorted, hands throwing themselves up in weak yet frantic attempts at defence before his gag reflex got the better of him and one of the medics turfed his body onto its side so he could empty up the contents of his stomach onto the already-soiled carpet.

“There you go! Good job, kid! Good job!”

Joshua lay down. He just keeled over onto the rug and closed his eyes because breathing and living and existing were too exhausting right now. 

His arms were throbbing from the CPR, his eyes ached from all the crying and his throat stung with the sour taste of his own words.

He watched Minghao heaving for breath just a few feet in front of him, and as his mind assured itself that his little boy was conscious, it allowed him to descend into unconsciousness.

Joshua Hong slept for thirteen hours that night. 


	12. 제 11 장

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song Recommendation:  
"Wishbone" by Debbie Neigher

“What the fuck were you thinking?”

Minghao opened his eyes at once, head turning towards the source of the question from where he lay in his crisp papery hospital bed with an IV pumping fluids into the crook of his arm.

Seungcheol was standing - there was a chair right in front of him but he hadn't taken it - in the middle of the room with his arms folded protectively over his chest and his eyes swollen and scarlet as they continued to ooze salted dewdrops.

He was crying. Minghao's leader was crying because of him. The words Seungcheol was firing were laden with devastation and shame rather than anger and hatred like they should have been.

“Ming…” Seungcheol started before his throat closed up and he had to clear it with a strangled cough. “Minghao, why would you try to leave us like that?”

“I didn't,” Minghao whispered, his own eyes starting to drip as he tried to prop his elbows beneath him and sit up but his weakened body forced him back against the pillows. “I swear, hyung, I wasn't trying to kill myself. It was an accident.”

“An accident?” Seungcheol whimpered, his entire body trembling and his feet still refusing to carry him closer to the bed. “You swallowed twenty-seven pills by accident?”

Minghao closed his eyes, a fresh wave of tears dribbling down the side of his face to rest comfortably in his hair.

Everything was such a mess. It was blurry and confusing and horrible and Minghao wished the only thing he had to worry about was a ruptured ACL.

“You're an addict,” Seungcheol forced out, his voice cracking on that third word as though it tasted foul and poisonous on his tongue. “Mingyu got it out of Daeyeol. Oh, and he’s been fired, by the way. But you've been hooked on your medication for months now, haven't you?”

Minghao nodded, eyes still screwed shut, and only then did he truly accept himself for who he was, because now Seungcheol had said it and therefore there was no more running on a leg that was screwed to hell and there was no more lying through a mouth that stank of cigarette smoke and he was an addict.

A drug addict.

  
  


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  
  


Jun had never looked less like Jun.

He was just lying there, absorbed by the sheets and the machines and the beeping sounds with that disgusting tube down his throat and all those wires sticking out of his skin. They didn’t belong there. Minghao didn’t like them.

And as he stood at the window to the ICU, watching as Seungkwan stepped aside to let the nurse do her routine checks, scribbling her findings onto the clipboard she then hooked back onto the foot of the bed, Minghao had never hated himself more.

“Aren’t you supposed to still be in bed?” came the cruelly curt voice from behind and he whipped around to see Soonyoung leaning against the wall with a shopping mall of bags hanging beneath his eyes and his cracked lips strained into a thin straight line.

Minghao hated that his first reaction was to run before he found himself tasting his hyung’s knuckles, and clearly his trepidation had shown on his face because Soonyoung’s cold expression softened into one of guilty exhaustion.

“I’m sorry for what I said the other day,” he whispered at the floor, avoiding Minghao’s eye contact and busying himself with the fraying tip of his shoelace. “I don’t want you to go to prison and …”

“No,” Minghao cut him off abruptly, apologising almost instantly when Soonyoung’s eyebrows arched in surprise. “I mean, you shouldn’t be sorry. I … It is my fault that Jun-hyung is …”

They both winced at the reminder of what lay beyond the glass they were both resolutely refusing to look at, and Minghao abandoned his sentence altogether for fear that it might set off another volley of blame and accusations.

“But he’s made it so far, right?” he prodded, noticing the hint of desperation in his voice as he spoke. “They said he’d be lucky to survive twenty-four hours but he’s … he’s still here so that’s … got to count for something, right?”

Soonyoung never answered the question, maybe because he didn’t know the answer or maybe because he did and just didn’t want to tell his little brother, but the topic of conversation changed so fast that Minghao had no time to question his hyung’s motives.

“You need to go to rehab.”

His entire body seemed to jolt with the force of that simple sentence, his blood chilling in his veins and his heart vaulting into his mouth to accompany the sour taste of bile that crept up his throat. 

His jaw spasmed comically as he tried to come up with some form of response but there was none to be given.

“I love you, Hao,” Soonyoung whispered and his eyes were sparkling as he said so. “We all love you so much and that’s why you have to get help. Because this can’t continue. This …”

He gestured to the hospital gown that draped Minghao’s terrifyingly frail body, the slightly less obstructive Velcro brace that encompassed his knee and the IV pole he had somehow managed to drag alongside him on the illegal trip he’d made from his hospital room to the ICU.

“This is so hard for us to watch, and when Jun wakes up – because he  _ will  _ wake up, Hao – he’s going to need us to take care of him for a really long time. And we can’t do that if we’re taking care of you. So I love you, Hao, I really, really love you but you need to go to rehab.”

Minghao turned around, his bare feet dragging against the polished floors, and stared through the thick sheet of glass to see Seungkwan stroking Jun’s hair while the elder remained colourless and comatose in that vast expanse of white cotton. And he knew that Soonyoung was right.

“We love you,” his hyung repeated as he stepped up behind him and wrapped his arms around the skinny waist, burying his face in the nape of his little brother’s neck just so he could douse the tissue paper skin with his own tears. “We love you so much but we can’t do this on our own anymore.”

And Minghao finally managed to form the syllables he’d thought his brain couldn’t fathom in answer that choked him from the inside out but made perfect sense in every single way.

“I understand.”

He felt Soonyoung nodding, snotty nose rubbing against the collar of his shirt, before a word of whispered permission slipped from between trembling lips and Minghao hadn’t realised he’d needed to hear those words so much.

“Go see Jun. He needs you.” 

Minghao pushed open the door and trundled into the room with his IV bag swinging on its hook at the top of the pole, the wheels squeaking painfully as they scraped against unoiled metal. Seungkwan glanced up through puffy eyes and instantly rose to his feet, crossing the space between them in two strides and bundling the taller body up in his arms.

“Don’t ever do that to us again,” he pleaded in Minghao’s ear as the younger hugged him back just as tight. “Please don’t ever do that to us again because I can’t take it. I just can’t.”

“Okay. I promise.”

Seungkwan left him after that, but not before he’d pressed a kiss into Minghao’s greasy and unwashed hair, abandoning one broken boy with an even more broken boy.

Minghao wanted to cry. He wanted to vomit. He wanted to take the needle embedded in his skin and use it to gouge his eyes out so that he didn’t have to see the sight that lay before him: Jun looking like every ounce of happiness and colour and warmth had been sapped from his terrifyingly frail body. But he didn’t deserve to do any of those things.

“Hey,” he finally managed to grind out as he lowered himself into the hardbacked plastic chair, his fingers fretting slightly before they decided to firmly encase Jun’s hand in their hold. “I’m … I’m sorry.”

It was a pathetic stab at repentance, he knew that, but he didn’t know what else to say. Sorry would never, ever be good enough, and yet there was no other word that could take its place.

So instead, he started promising things, living in desperate hope that Jun could hear him and would use his words to fashion a ladder that could help him climb out of that dank dark hole and into their arms.

“I’m going to get better,” he swore, not permitting himself to look at Jun’s face and instead focusing on that spindly little hand against the bedsheets. “I … I didn’t even know I was sick. I thought … I thought I was handling it and I wouldn’t listen to anyone who told me otherwise but now I know that I need help. I know that I’m an … an addict and I know I’ve hurt so many people because of it.”

Including you. Especially you. That’s what I feel guiltiest for.

“But now the only thing I’m going to focus on is recovery. I don’t care about whether I’ll ever dance again or perform again. I don’t care if the company kicks me out. I don’t care if you never want to see my face again but I am going to get better because that’s the only thing I can do for you now. You’re going to wake up and I’ll be … I won’t be the ‘me’ that you knew but I’ll be a new me. A better me. I promise. I’m going to do this. For you.”

And it would be okay. Because recovery couldn’t be that hard. Surely not. Not as hard as being a trainee. Not as hard as having to starve himself every single day to maintain the weight his company called ‘adequate’. Not as hard as working himself into the ground so that he could prove he was worthy of his place in the performance team.

He had been through so much already. This was just another step on that staircase. He could do it. It would be fine. Because it couldn’t be that hard.

Right? 


	13. 제 12 장

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song Recommendation:  
"Half A Man" by Dean Lewis

It was 3am and he was throwing up again.

His hands were gripping the toilet seat so tightly that his knuckles had turned white and his fingertips were throbbing mercilessly, but he was thankful for the pain.

Anything to distract himself from the bile that scorched his throat every time it exploded from his mouth with disgusting violence.

“Oh, Hao,” came Jeonghan’s soft voice as his hyung traipsed across the tiled floor, pushing his tangled fringe out of his eyes before lowering himself to his knees beside Minghao’s hunched figure.

Minghao groaned between heaves, relishing in the feeling of Jeonghan’s hand rubbing up and down his bare back, tracing the indentations in his spine.

He had been sweating too much in his bed to wear a shirt, the thin sheets tangled around his trembling legs and adding another sheen of glistening moisture to his skin.

“It’ll be over soon,” Jeonghan soothed, but Minghao knew he was lying.

Minghao knew that this was withdrawal. This was detoxing. It could last for days. No let up, no mercy, no conscience.

He would puke and spasm and sweat for as long as his body decided it needed to before it grew accustomed to life without the oxy in his system.

Finally, his stomach gave in and his gag reflex stopped contracting with every breath he inhaled and Minghao slumped against Jeonghan’s chest, too exhausted to even reach up and wipe the dribble of digested innards from his mouth.

“Good job, Hao,” Jeonghan muttered, snagging a wad of tissue and using it to mop up the excess vomit before reaching up and flushing the toilet, sending the entirety of Minghao’s constricted diet down the drain. “Good job. You’re doing so well. Hyung’s so proud of you.”

“Please …” Minghao whispered, his eyes fluttering closed as he nuzzled further into Jeonghan’s shirt, quivering fingers fisted in the material as his shoulders heaved with exertion. “Please, hyung, please …”

“Please what?” Jeonghan responded, tossing aside the soiled tissue and combing his hands through Minghao’s sweat-soaked hair. “What do you need, Hao?”

His mind was screaming at him. _ No! Don’t do it! You’re better than this! Don’t give in now!_

And he wanted to believe that he was strong enough to obey, but his body was literally on its knees on a bathroom floor, half naked and drenched in perspiration as its stomach groaned from the assault on its bile ducts.

His body was craving only one thing and his mind wasn’t forceful enough to resist.

“Oxy,” he gasped out, tightening his grip on Jeonghan’s shirt. “I need it. Please, hyung, I need oxy. Just a little bit.”

“Hao …”

“Just a little bit. Please. I won’t tell anyone. I promise. Just a little bit and then I’ll quit. I promise. I just need a little bit.”

“Minghao, please don’t ask me that.”

He knew he was disgusting. He knew he was pathetic and weak and unworthy of anything he asked of them, but he was also desperate.

The pain was too much. The muscle spasms, the stomach cramps, the vomiting, the sweating, it was driving him insane and all he needed was one little white pill to take it all away.

“Please, hyung …” he mumbled into Jeonghan’s shirt. “I’ll never ask for anything again. I swear. I’ll never ask for anything ever again.”

“Come on, Hao,” Jeonghan ground out, and Minghao could hear the trembling in his voice as he fought back his tears. “Let’s get you back to bed.”

“No,” Minghao whined as arms encircled his chest and heaved him off the bathroom floor. “Please, hyung, please.”

His legs were shaking so violently that they wouldn’t support his weight, but Jeonghan didn’t seem to mind. He heaved Minghao across the floor as easily as if he were a ragdoll, and shouldered open the bathroom door to reveal the sweat-soaked sheets in a tangled mess on the bed.

“I just … I just need … a little bit …”

He was starting to sound delirious now, his words slurring together as the exhaustion sunk its razor-sharp claws into his prickling flesh.

He wanted to scratch his own skin off but he was too tired. He wanted the pain to go away. He wanted everything to stop.

He wanted to die.

“Don’t say that,” Jeonghan snapped as he lowered his little brother onto the bed and tugged the damp covers over his shivering body, and Minghao realised he’d spoken aloud. “Don’t you ever say that, Hao. You will get through this. I promise.”

But Minghao didn’t believe him. Why should he? He was hurting. Every body part was twisted with pure agony and Jeonghan was just letting it devour him. Jeonghan wasn’t helping him, Jeonghan was denying him the one thing he needed to relax.

“I hate you!” he spat, his entire body jerking with a particularly violent spasm. “I wish you weren’t my hyung!”

Jeonghan said nothing. That was truly the worst part. He didn’t even try to defend himself. He just dipped the flannel cloth in the bowl of water beside the bed and dabbed at Minghao’s shining skin.

“Get off me!” Minghao tried to swat at his hands but his fingers snagged in the blankets and he was too disorientated to free them. “I hate you! You’re torturing me! I hate you so much!”

His voice was rising in decibel, bordering on a screech, and even the sight of Jeonghan’s tears wasn’t enough to stop him.

He closed his eyes, refusing to admit that the cool sensation of a damp cloth against his burning skin was nothing short of heavenly, because he hated Yoon Jeonghan. He hated him so much.

He hated all of them.

“I wish you were dead,” he hissed through gritted teeth as his legs twitched agonisingly beneath the tissue paper sheets. “I wish this was you right now. And I wish you were dead.”

It was the strangled sob, muffled by a hand pushed up against a mouth, and the disappearance of the rag on his skin that made Minghao realise just how severe the line he’d crossed was.

He cracked his eyes open just in time to see Jeonghan throwing open the door and disappearing from sight.

The sound of weeping trickled down the hallway, accompanied by gentle shushing and Minghao processed the true extent of what he’d just done.

He’d just told his hyung – his best friend, his brother – that he wished him dead. That he hated him. That he would rather it be Jeonghan lying in this bed, drenched in perspiration and crying out in pain with every electric shock that passed through his body.

Jeonghan was the most selfless person he knew. Whatever that boy did, he did for someone else. He would throw himself in front of a train for any one of them and Minghao had just spat in his face.

He clambered out of bed, his knees trembling beneath his weight and yet somehow managing to support him as he tottered towards the door, his hands reaching out to steady himself on the frame.

The sobs were getting louder and as he staggered to the living room door, his eyes were watering so badly that he could barely take in the sight that lay before him. 

Jeonghan was leaning against the wall, his forehead pressed into the concrete with his arms covering his head and his body wracked with the grief it couldn’t shake. And Joshua was standing behind him, face buried in his hyung’s pyjama shirt as he hugged him with all the strength he possessed.

“He loves you,” he was whispering. “He’s just sick at the moment, but he loves you so much. Please don’t do this to yourself.”

Jeonghan’s words were incoherent through the violence of his crying, but Joshua seemed to understand as he continued with his gentle soothing even though his own eyes were streaming.

“Joochan-hyung will find a rehab centre that can take him and keep him safe and look after him and he’ll get better. You’ll see, Han. He’ll get better. He doesn’t know what he’s saying right now but this won’t last forever. We’re all going to get through this together.”

Hatred. Guilt and hatred. Those were the only two emotions Minghao could feel as he ducked back out of the living room and pressed his back against the wall, eyes closed and jaw shuddering with shivers.

Never, in years and years and years of brotherhood, had he seen Jeonghan cry like that. And it was his fault. All of this was his fault.

Jun still in the hospital, clinging to life by a thread, which was exactly how thin his arteries were thanks to the smoke damage.

Seungcheol pushed to the point of exhaustion where he had collapsed in the kitchen the previous day.

Jeonghan sobbing against a wall with Joshua clinging to his back and not a single ounce of hope in a body that had once been so bright.

All of this was because of Minghao and his selfish, selfish, selfish decisions.

And yet he still craved the sensation of oxy in his system.

But he couldn’t be here anymore. He couldn’t witness the devastation he had caused. He couldn’t hurt them again. None of them.

He couldn’t listen to their sobs, he couldn’t watch them stitching themselves back together after he’d ripped them apart just so that they run back to him, take care of him and let him destroy them once more.

And more than anything, he couldn’t stand another minute without a fix.

So he stuffed his sockless feet into his shoes, missing the target several times due to how unsteady he was, and bundled himself up in his thickest jacket with his fingers slipping on the zip on far too many occasions.

Wonwoo’s wallet was sitting on the chest of drawers beside the door. It was just waiting for him to take it so he could empty its contents into the hand of the first person who could give him what he craved.

He knew he shouldn’t, but what was one more sin to add to the list?

He left his family in a state of disarray and despair.

And he didn’t once look back. 


	14. 제 13 장

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song Recommendation:  
"Sober" by Demi Lovato

If Minghao had been in his right mind, he would have realised how stupid he was being. How he had no idea where he was going or what he would do when he got there. But the only thing on that mind that was so not right was drugs.

These crime shows and action movies always had some kind of narcotics exchange woven into their cliché and unimaginative plots but they never included how the fuck you were supposed to get yourself into that situation.

It wasn’t like dealers would be roaming the streets with the words, “GET YOUR FIX HERE!” emblazoned on their chests.

If Minghao had been in his right mind, he would have been disgusted by himself. It was nearly four in the morning – the witching hour as Hansol called it in his ghost stories – and the streets were eerily silent. No cars, no pedestrians, not even a bird or a cat.

It was the perfect setting for a detoxing boy to stagger down the pavement with his teeth chattering and his arms hugging his jacket to his sweaty skin. 

His mother had always told him never to venture down the alleyways that gnawed their gloomy passages into the city of Seoul.

“They’re teeming with bad people,” she had warned him as he packed his bags for Korea, still just an ignorant child despite what his ego had told him. “They sell drugs and swear three times every sentence and they have knives, Hao. Promise me you’ll always stay by the roads.”

If Minghao had been in his right mind, he would have been ashamed of his pathetic inability to keep one simple little promise.

His footsteps were clumsy and badly coordinated and at some point, he had to stop and lunge for the nearest wall to empty the contents of his stomach onto the brickwork.

He could feel his body getting desperate for release: muscles cramping, jaw spasming, insides curdling, and if he wasn’t so determined to get his high, he would have crumpled to the ground and accepted death.

Death actually sounded pretty appealing at that moment. But so did the feeling of oxycodone soothing his body, protecting it from the withdrawal beast that ravaged his every cell.

Such was his disorientation that he didn’t see the figure stalking towards him until his balance gave out and he staggered sideways, colliding with the wide breadth of a very furious-looking man.

“Watch your fucking steps,” he snarled, shoving M away from him so hard that the boy lost his footing and crashed to the ground with a pained grunt.

He didn’t have the energy to get up. He didn’t have the energy to do anything more than shrivel into a ball, body wracked with shivers and hair plastered to his forehead. And he knew that he probably smelled just as bad as the bulging bags of trash that seemed to be swallowing him from behind.

His eyes were screwed shut as though he could hide from the pain, but he still felt the man he’d hit crouching down in front of him. And when he opened them, he saw a raised eyebrow and a thin smirk of sadistic interest.

“What are you on?” he questioned, and Minghao felt his stomach twist in what could have been excitement or just another indication that he was going to projectile vomit all down his front.

This man knew he was detoxing. Ergo, this man knew about drugs. Ergo, this man might possibly know where to get drugs. Ergo, Minghao needed to answer this man. Because Minghao needed drugs. Minghao needed drugs now.

“Oxycodone,” he croaked, voice scratchy and painful to use.

The man sniggered unkindly before he leaned so close that Minghao could smell the smoke on his breath and whispered, “You need a fix?”

His vulnerable victim nodded with all the remaining strength he had, too desperate to care when the giant before him let out a bark of laughter at the sign of his pathetic desperation.

“You got cash?”

Wonwoo’s wallet tumbled out of his pocket before the sentence even ended and trembling fingers held it out as an offering. A plea. One that was rewarded in the form of a tiny sealable plastic bag brimming with a greenish brown powder.

“Wait,” Minghao stuttered as the dealer stuffed the entirety of Wonwoo’s money into his pocket before discarding the worn leather case at his feet.

“What?”

“This … I can’t take this …”

He’d never used powder. Only pills. He didn’t know what you were supposed to do. And if this was heroin … he wasn’t that bad. He would never be that bad. He used oxy. Not heroin. Only crackheads used heroin. Minghao was not a crackhead.

“I don’t think you’re in a position to be choosy, mate,” the dealer smirked as he spun on his heel and retreated into the concrete city maze, yelling over his shoulder as he vanished into the shadows, “Snort it! Trust me, you’ll be thankful you did!”

If Minghao had been in his right mind, he never would have listened. But Minghao hadn’t been in his right mind even before he inhaled the heroin into his system.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Hi,” Seungcheol sighed as he pulled down his mask and addressed the police officer through the sheet of bulletproof glass at the reception desk. “I’m here to pick up Xu Minghao. He’s about this tall, super skinny and high as a kite.”

The woman behind the counter gave a nod of approval, seemingly agreeing with his bitter statement, and pushed out of her chair with a sigh of exhaustion Seungcheol knew far too well. It was what he was feeling at that exact moment.

He glanced over his shoulder to where Wonwoo was waiting, arms folded and jaw set as he stared at the floor and quite obviously tried not to cry.

The fact that Minghao had stolen his money was not what was hurting him, Seungcheol knew that. It was the fact that Minghao had stolen from him to buy drugs.

The leader couldn’t imagine how Wonwoo must be feeling at that moment. Betrayal, hatred, a sick sense of duty to help his little brother even after he’d handed his credit card over to a dealer in exchange for a few grams of weed. He reached out and squeezed the younger boy’s shoulder, really not knowing what else he could do.

The female police officer emerged from behind the desk, a ring of keys swinging in her grasp as she wordlessly beckoned them forwards.

They followed, feet dragging along the ground as she unlocked two sets of doors before they reached the corridor lined with grey doors.

Someone was singing inside one. Someone was screaming inside another. A body seemed to collide with the metal and Seungcheol instinctively pulled Wonwoo under his arm, finding himself wishing that he had just told his friend to stay in the car.

“He tried to break into a drugstore,” the officer informed them solemnly as she stopped at their destination and fiddled with the ring of metal teeth until she found the one that would fit snugly into the lock. “The imbecile probably thought he’d get some more weed inside.”

Seungcheol closed his eyes for a brief moment of self-composure before the door creaked on its hinges and he stepped inside, Wonwoo right behind him.

Minghao was lying on the bench against the wall, his feet crossed at the ankles and his fingers interlocked over his stomach as he gazed wistfully up at the blank white ceiling above his head, the corners of his mouth lifted in a giddy smile.

He didn’t even acknowledge their arrival.

“Come on, Hao,” Seungcheol ordered, marching over and taking hold of the younger boy’s arm in order to heave him off the bench. “We’re going home now.”

Minghao looked up at him with a kind of amused surprise, as though his leader had just appeared out of nowhere. 

“Oh, hey, hyung,” he hummed, raising a swaying arm to point at the still very blank ceiling. “Aren’t the stars pretty tonight?”

“Sure,” Seungcheol confirmed for him, snaking an arm around that skinny waist and steering him towards the door, Wonwoo joining them on Minghao’s other side to provide further stability. “I just don’t have the time to enjoy them because I’m bailing your ungrateful ass out of jail.”

Minghao sniggered, stumbling slightly before managing to right himself. “You’re funny.”

They tottered clumsily back out into the precinct and Seungcheol released his grip, ensuring that Wonwoo had him held firm before he stepped away and gave his orders. “Get him in the car. I’ll be there in a second.”

And he approached the counter to pay the bail money, blinking back tears and wondering how the fuck he had let things get this bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please copy and paste this link into your search bar and sign a petition that will hopefully cause some kind of legal action to be taken against Han Seohee, the person responsible for the defamation of multiple idols including iKON's B.I, Monsta X's Wonho and Shownu, GOT7's Jackson and NCT's Taeyong. Thank you. 
> 
> http://chng.it/JF882FrmrD


	15. 제 14 장

He was allowed to see Jun one more time.

Seungcheol drove him to the hospital after he’d had the chance to say his strained and awkward goodbyes to the others. Jeonghan and Wonwoo hadn’t been among them. 

Joochan was waiting for them in Jun’s room and they gave Minghao a moment of privacy to hold his hyung’s hand and tell him he loved him and that he was going to get better before they loaded him back into the car and shipped him off to rehab.

It was horrible. He was already beginning to detox from the previous day’s adventures and the shivers kicked in as he curled in on himself in the backseat. 

His skin itched, his body both burned and froze at the same time and it felt like there were knives driving into each of his joints every time he moved.

But none of that compared to the pain of pulling up the farmer’s road, trundling over gravel and stones and past acres and acres of fields and greenery, and realising that his family were willingly handling him over to a group of people he’d never met.

They were giving up. Just like they promised they wouldn’t. 

They were finally saying, “enough is enough. We don't want you anymore,” and they were getting rid of him. They were washing their hands clean of all traces of his DNA.

What was to stop them from leaving him here and never coming back?

He saw the sign before he saw the farmhouse itself: a simple wooden thing with the words “Coming Clean Rehabilitation Centre” artistically engraved in the chiselled bark. 

This was it. This was his home for the next however many months, and he had nobody to blame but himself.

He had stolen Wonwoo’s money. He had told Jeonghan he wished him dead. He had put Seungcheol through absolute hell. And he had almost killed Jun. 

Whatever these people were going to put him through – therapy, counselling, exercises, detoxing – he deserved every last bit of it.

“I’m doing this because I love you,” Seungcheol whispered as he wrapped Minghao in his arms, the centre’s main coordinator hovering behind them with his mouth stretched in an infuriatingly kind smile. “And because I want you to be healthy.”

Minghao didn’t return the embrace. He couldn’t. No matter how worthy he was of all this torture, he couldn’t help the feeling of resentment towards his leader from growing deep within his chest. 

If Seungcheol really loved him, he would look after him himself. He wouldn’t turf him into someone else’s lap just because it got too difficult.

That’s not what family did.

“I’ll come and visit as often as I can, okay?” Seungcheol continued, stroking the back of his little brother’s head even though he probably knew he wasn’t going to get any response. “And be good to these people, Hao. They’re going to take much better care of you then I ever could.”

It took far too long for Minghao to realise that Seungcheol was crying. 

He wasn’t letting go because he was finding this just as hard as Minghao was. He was being tortured, too. And it was that thought that had the younger boy reaching up to clamp his arms around his hyung’s body.

“I love you,” Seungcheol whimpered. “I love you so much but I can’t look after you anymore.”

The words were almost identical to Soonyoung’s teary statements almost a week ago in the hospital. And Minghao gave the best and most truthful answer that he could.

“I know.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“This one here’s your room,” Minjun said, opening the door at the end of the hall and revealing plain white walls, a polished chest of drawers and a single bed with thin navy blue sheets. “I’ll give you some time to unpack your things and settle in and then I’ll come and introduce you to the rest of the guys.”

He clapped Minghao on the shoulder and left him there, bag flopping to the floor with a thump and eyes welling with tears as he closed the door and pressed his back to the wood, sliding down until he came to rest on the scratchy carpet.

He used to be a dancer. He used to be a role model. What was he now? A drug addict in a rehab centre with his best friend in a coma at the hospital because of what he’d done. 

The people here were good, absolutely. They were friendly and kind and Minjun had been nothing but compassionate since he’d arrived, but they weren’t his members.

No matter how hard they tried, they would never compare to his true family.

There was a pamphlet on the chest of drawers and he picked it up, needing to have something to do to distract him from the shivers and the shakes that came alongside opioid withdrawal.

The name of the centre was plastered across the front in big bubbly writing and Minghao blinked back his tears as he started to read, filling up his cotton-woolled mind with information on the place that would be his home for the next few months.

Coming Clean Rehabilitation Centre.

Stationed on a farm, at least twelve miles from the rest of civilisation.

The only residents were men over the age of 18.

All the staff members used to be drug addicts themselves.

Once he was detoxed, he would be allowed to work on the farm. Apparently vitamin D and back-breaking labour were going to pull him out of this spinning vortex that kept sucking him further and further in.

It was pathetic. It was stupid. It wasn’t going to work.

These people preached compassion and kindness and seeking a true soul all while feeling at one with nature and Minghao had no desire to plough fields or milk cows or do whatever the fuck it was that farmers did because he wanted to go home.

If this stupid centre was all about yoga and meditation and finding inner peace then surely the idiots who ran it would be easy enough to fool. 

As long as he played his part, read his lines, told the lies he needed to tell, they would let him out in just a few weeks. 

They wouldn’t be able to keep him if he gave them nothing but a perfect little recovering addict to go on their list of success stories.

He would be able to go home and deal with this by himself, just like he’d always done. And fuck anyone who said otherwise.

Fuck Seungcheol and fuck Joochan and fuck Jeonghan and Wonwoo and Joshua and all the others because he was not a child and they could not lock him up just because he had a couple of issues. It was his body and he had a right to do whatever he wanted to do with it.

He was perfectly capable of fighting this disease on his own. He would get out of here, he would get clean and then he would come back to them – to Seungcheol and Jeonghan and Wonwoo and Joshua and all the others – and he would show them just how strong he was when they’d thought him weak.

And then he would leave them. He deserved better after everything he’d been through. That’s what he repeated to himself as he slumped over the toilet bowl that night, hacking up his guts into the bathroom silence at what Hansol called the witching hour.

He deserved better. And he was going home.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“So that’s it,” Seungcheol sighed, sagging in his seat with his hands falling limp in his lap. He never thought he could feel so drained just from talking. “That’s everything that’s happened.”

It seemed fictional, too unbelievable to be real because how could a single group be perfect, climbing higher and higher and higher with every song they put out one minute, and then the next have one member in a narcotics rehabilitation programme and another clinging to life in the ICU. 

But every word had been the complete and perfect truth, and the shame was starting to consume him from the inside out.

“I feel like I’ve failed,” he whispered. “No one’s talking anymore. It's like no one’s even in the house. I try to check on them every night, to see if they’re … I don’t know, still breathing? But they don’t respond to me when I ask if they’re okay and everything just feels so empty. Like we’re just waiting for him to come home and everything to go back to normal again.”

He sat forwards, elbows leaning on his knees and face buried in his clammy palms.

“I sent him away. He’s never needed me more but I just sent him away. And I told myself that it was for the best, that I was protecting him and the others, but is that really true? Am I protecting him by shipping him off to live with those crackheads who are only there because it’s their last stop before jail? That can’t be what a leader does.”

There was no reply from the white walls and the disinfected air.

“I did the right thing, didn’t I? I made the right choice?”

Nothing. Not even a twitch from the matchstick in the bed, leeching life off a softly sucking machine.

“Well …” Seungcheol choked out, defeated and depressed and just dead in every way but one. “At least one of us is getting some proper sleep.”

He leaned forwards and pressed his lips to Jun’s forehead, carefully avoiding all the tubes and tidying the messy hair as he flicked a stray tear from his own cheek.

“I’m not giving up on either of you,” he promised. “Not you or Hao. I swear to you, Jun, I’m not giving up.”

Every one of his joints seem to groan in protest as he straightened up, loitering pathetically beside the bed before he finally uttered his final sentiment and forced himself out of that door, “I’ll come back tomorrow.”

He would be lying if he said he didn’t cross the road without looking in the hopes that a car would mow him down and end his suffering, but then that would be just one more tragedy for the media to milk for all it was worth.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was 8am when they got the call. Minghao had punched another resident and was demanding to be “released”.

Seungcheol had sunk to the kitchen floor, phone still gripped in his hand as his legs refused to support him any longer and he was so far into the pits of despairing darkness that he could barely hear Seokmin’s worried questions from beside him. 

Because he was done.

He didn’t know how to deal with this anymore. He wasn’t fit to be a leader and when he finally snapped out of it and realised Soonyoung had gone to the farm in his place, the guilt was overwhelming. 

Engulfing. Unbearable. Torturous.

He left the dorm that night, needing to clear his head before he had to resume the pretence that he knew what the hell he was doing, but halfway across the park, his body seemed to decide that enough was enough.

That it was time to stop.

And so he did.


	16. 제 15 장

“So …” Soonyoung started, swaying gently backwards and forwards on the swing set on the edge of the woods with his feet grazing the ground and dirtying the tip of his shoe with dust. “What happened?”

Minghao sighed from the swing beside him, equally as interested in painting pretty patterns in the dirt at his feet, and dripping with shame and embarrassment before he finally plucked up the courage to speak.

“I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t ask for an apology,” Soonyoung shot back. “I asked what happened. Why did you hit him? Why would you jeopardise your place here when Joochan-hyung had to pull so many strings to get you to the top of the waiting list. This was the best facility we could find that would be willing to take you so why would you flip out like that and risk throwing it all away?”

The trees were rustling above them, birds cooing, a stream somewhere in the woods splashing against rocks on its journey to the sea. 

It was so beautiful. So picturesque, designed to calm the jitters of an addict and introduce them to a world that really could be seen as something other than cruel.

“I was antsy,” Minghao supplied uselessly, still refusing to raise his shameful gaze. “I’m still feeling the effects of withdrawal and my temper was really short and he just got on my nerves. I didn’t mean to punch him. I just wanted to go home.”

He looked up at last and Soonyoung saw tears sparkling in the corners of his eyes.

“I still want to go home.”

“I know,” his hyung murmured, hardened heart softening at the sight of the despair and the desperation wallowing in every pore of this little boy in front of him. “But this is the fight, isn’t it? This is how you get better. And punching people, kicking off, making a scene and threatening to run away is not going to get you off the drugs. Don’t you remember what I told you when you first hurt your knee?”

Minghao thought for a moment and then shook his head. It had been too long ago to recall generic messages of comfort and encouragement but his knee still twitched at the thought of all the trauma it had been through.

“I told you that you can’t just expect recovery to be handed to you on a silver platter. You’ve got to put the work in and we’re not leaving you behind, Hao, I promised you then and I’m sticking to that but the only person who can get you better is you.”

He was right. Of course, he was right. He was always right. Annoyingly so.

“I’m trying,” he whispered, closing his eyes to try and fight the tears and therefore not hearing Soonyoung rise from his perch and crouch down in front of him until he felt a hand on his knee.

“I can see you’re trying,” he soothed. “And I won’t tell you that I even begin to understand how hard this is but you are so strong, Hao. There is no one around you right now that doesn’t want you to see recovery. We’re all here. You’re living with half a dozen therapists, for fuck’s sake. Talk to one of them. Don’t shut everybody out because you’re somewhere where everybody is going through exactly the same thing.”

It was another few minutes before Soonyoung grabbed hold of his hand and pulled him away from the swing set. It was brightly painted and pretty but too small, designed for the children of the residents who occasionally came to visit, and Minghao’s legs were starting to ache from having to bend so awkwardly.

Instead, they took a walk, skirting around the fields and watching the quite hilariously pregnant sheep hauling themselves around with their overgrown bellies wobbling beneath them. In just a couple of weeks, they would start producing skippy little cloud nuggets and Minghao wasn’t afraid to admit he couldn’t wait.

“How’s Jun-hyung?” he asked out of the blue, cursing himself for not inquiring sooner, and when Soonyoung’s steps faltered slightly, he felt his stomach dropping into his feet. “What’s happened? What’s wrong? Is he …?”

“No,” the older boy cried out sharply. “No, Hao, Jun’s … Jun’s fine. He’s doing really well. They took him off the ventilator and now he's breathing mostly on his own with just a little support so the doctor says that’s really positive.”

But Minghao could sense something else was wrong. “Then why do you look so miserable?”

Soonyoung’s entire body seemed to inflate with tension and then deflate with an equal amount of something similar to frustration, and the words that followed were more terrifying than anything Minghao could have imagined.

“I’ll tell you but you have to stay calm, okay?”

He nodded at once even though he knew he couldn’t guarantee such a favour when he had no idea what had happened. If someone was hurt, if someone was sick or had gone missing or something awful like that, there was absolutely no way he was sticking around here when his family needed him.

“Cheol-hyung collapsed.”

Everything seemed to explode. Those three words shook him to the core and left his ears ringing and his knees shaking and his hand reaching out to grasp onto the fence for fear that he might keel over himself at such a horrifying bombshell.

Seungcheol had collapsed? Why? Was he sick? Had he worked himself too hard? Was he okay? Was he in the hospital? Was someone with him? Was he alone? Have the doctors said anything? Is he awake now? What did …

“One question at a time,” Soonyoung interrupted and Minghao realised for the first time that he’d been talking aloud, his words stumbling over each other in their haste to make themselves known and he sputtered to an obedient silence, waiting and praying.

“The doctors said it was exhaustion. He hadn’t eaten enough and he was stressed and his body just decided he needed to rest. He’s at the hospital right now but Mingyu called just before I got here and told me that he’s awake and he’s talking and he can probably go home tonight. He’s okay, Hao, I promise.”

But he wasn’t okay. He had collapsed because of stress. Because he’d been starving himself. Because he hadn’t slept properly. And all of those things had been triggered by one person: one evil, cruel, selfish person who seemed to have made it their mission to make their family as miserable as possible.

“He collapsed because of me?”

Soonyoung opened his mouth, already shaking his head with the word “no” ghosting over his lips, but then he stopped. He seemed to freeze for a second, considering his options, before he finally answered the question.

“Yes.”

Well, Minghao hadn’t been expecting that. And it was just as much the shock as the truthfulness of the statement that had tears welling in his eyes and sobs already working their way up his throat to bubble from his mouth without permission or mercy.

“But also because of Jun-hyung. And because of the management company pressuring him into releasing a statement. There are so many things that go on in Cheol-hyung’s life that we don’t know and that he doesn’t tell us because that’s what he does as a leader. That’s the kind of person he is. He sacrifices himself on a daily basis for every single one of us because we are his family and he would quite happily die for us.”

Minghao was staring at him, too confused to speak, so he continued.

“If you can’t find a reason to push through this programme then you haven’t thought about him. About Seungcheol-hyung. Seungcheol-hyung is your reason for getting better. You can never repay him for everything he’s done for you but that’s okay because he doesn’t want you to. He just wants you better, Hao. He just wants you to be happy and healthy again. So if you don’t want to do this for you then do it for him.”

That day, Minghao cried more than he’d ever cried in his entire life.

And that afternoon, he agreed to go to group therapy for the first time since he’d arrived at the centre.

They had beanbags and squishy chairs and other variations of comfortable furniture set in a loose circle around the room, each housing a body. Previously, Minghao had believed it was stupid. Like the circle time you did at pre-school. But now he kind of liked it. It made him feel like an equal.

The boy he’d punched – Taejoon – flopped down on the leather balloon beside him and for a second, Minghao thought there was about to be a fight, but then the older man held out his hand and Minghao took it, mumbling an apology under his breath.

“It’s forgotten,” Taejoon told him, already turning his attention to the door as Minjun walked in and settled himself on one of the armchairs. “We’ve all been there.”

“Okay,” Minjun started, leaning back in his chair. “Today, I thought we’d talk a little bit about guilt.”

That was another thing Minghao liked. Minjun didn’t talk like a regular therapist would because Minjun knew how frustrating that was. He’d been clean going on fifteen years now and he spoke to them as they should be spoken to: as human beings. Not drug addicts.

“Guilt is a given when it comes to addiction,” the older man continued, those kind eyes that had seen more than his fair share of the darker side of the world swivelling around each and every one of his residents. “We’ve all done things that we’re not proud of and I want to talk about them today and hopefully, you’ll be able to walk around a little lighter. Because once you come clean, you can become clean.”

For a split second, Minghao seriously considered getting up and walking out of the room. He didn’t want to list the things he’d done. They were too numerous, too awful, too unthinkable. The people in this room would instantly look down on him in contemptuous disgust, lips curled and eyes narrowed as they turned their backs and cast him from the ranks he had only just managed to infiltrate.

But then he remembered Soonyoung’s words. “Do it for Seungcheol.” So he stayed put.

“I’m quite happy to go first,” Minjun started when nobody looked like they were ready to speak up.

“When I was nineteen, I got high one night and I stole my dad’s car from the garage. Picked up some of my mates and we were racing all round town, drinking and smoking and shooting up like crazy and we were having the time of our lives.”

He paused for a second, looking as though he were mulling over his words, trying to figure out the best way to order them, until he finally decided on brutal honesty.

“And then I hit this lady as she was crossing the street. Killed her on impact. Her and the baby inside her belly.”

There was silence. Horror. Shock. Wordlessness.

“I did twenty-seven years for driving under the influence and causing death by dangerous driving. And every day, I thought about what I did. And I thought about the kind of monster I was. And I had no idea how to cope.”

Minghao had no idea what to say. He never imagined Minjun – kind, compassionate, strong Minjun – would have a past so horrific in which he committed a crime beyond the unthinkable. It just … It seemed so wrong.

“But then when I got out,” Minjun continued, still looking at each of them as though he wasn’t afraid of sharing this dark, dark sliver of his life.

“I kept using because I didn’t know how else to deal with the guilt. And then one day, I OD. And they brought me back, just like they’d done a dozen times before. But as I was walking out of that hospital, planning on finding some more dope and shooting up all over again, I saw this little boy being rushed into the ER. And he had his mama with him and she was screaming, ‘oh, save my baby. Please save my baby, he was hit by a drunk driver’ and I just stopped.

And I thought about that lady I killed all those years ago. And I thought about how I didn’t even remember her name. And I just decided, there and then, that I was going to get clean. And so I did. It took years of sweating out the withdrawal and screaming at my folks and going through all kinds of messed up shit but I finally did it.

And then I tracked down that lady’s husband and I went to see him. And I looked him straight in the eye and I said, ‘I killed your wife and unborn child thirty years ago because I was on drugs. And now I’m clean and I want to say that I’m sorry.’

And he looked at me – this full grown man – he just looked at me and then he started crying buckets and buckets and buckets and he hugs me for, like, a full five minutes and then he says, ‘Come inside and meet my children’. And I have never been happier in my life.”

By the end of the story, Minghao was a silently blubbering mess, and from the looks of the other guys around him, he wasn’t alone. But somehow, each and every one of them managed to tell their tales.

And some of them were wrought with dreadful, unimaginable sins, but no one judged anyone. And at last when it got to Minghao, he told his story with tears streaming down his face and an iron fist clenching his heart, and afterwards, he felt free.

He had come clean, at last. And now he could start the path towards real cleanliness. Towards sobriety and towards the life he so desperately wanted back in his possession.


	17. 제 16 장

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drama Recommendation:  
"Radiant Office"

Nine days later, the first lamb of the year was born.

Minjun woke them all at the crack of dawn, a huge beaming smile on his face as he jostled them into hoodies and wellington boots and then shepherded their groggy, complaining forms down to the field at the bottom of the driveway where they’d been housing the expecting mothers.

And there it had been, that little cloud of cotton wool wobbling about on spindly matchstick legs, its eyes barely open as it nudged its mother’s underbelly and bleated for milk.

It was stained slightly greenish and bloody from the birth but just watching it, so helpless and new and trusting and raw, was nothing short of breath-taking.

It wasn’t manly to cry at something like that. Minghao knew that. But he didn’t care. He cried. And nobody judged him.

There was just some beauty in the sight of something that had only gained its existence a mere ten minutes ago.

God had created a new life right in front of their eyes, fashioned so that its tiny little body functioned without a single flaw. God had given them something beautiful when all they had known for so, so long was ugliness and malignance.

God had told them that a miracle can blossom even in a creature so small.

Over the next three days, Minghao found himself down by the fields from the moment the sun clawed its weary way into the sky, counting the new lives that scampered about as though nothing was happier than simply existing.

And they grew so fast, gaining weight and girth with every passing day and a cow bore her first calf on the Monday and everything was just so … beautiful.

“Looking sharp there, Hao.”

Minghao looked up from where he was dragging the straw over the stable floor and shoving it into a dirty yellow needlestack with the broom’s dusty bristles. Minjun was leaning against the fence, his forearms resting atop the wooden structure as he smiled proudly at his biggest success story.

“Thanks,” Minghao chuckled as he propped the broom against the wall and wiped his hands on his jeans. “I think I’ve had enough Vitamin D now to no longer be in danger of developing rickets.”

“You’ve done so well,” Minjun told him and Minghao blushed, averting his gaze in embarrassment. “Seriously, Hao, I am so unbelievably proud of you. You’ve turned your life around and just look at you now. You’ve got your colour back, you’ve gained some weight and I’ve finally gotten to know that phenomenal young man you were hiding away when you first came here.”

“Thank you,” Minghao whispered, barely audible but audible enough.

And he meant it.

Minjun had been his rock, supporting him, guiding him, lending him a shoulder to cry on when he felt like breaking and a body to pummel when he felt like fighting, and none of it – not a single damn thing – could have been done without the patience and the dedication of the man that stood before him.

He wanted to say something else, anything else, but he couldn’t find the words and he was thankful when Minjun broke the silence they had lapsed into.

“You’ve got a visitor.”

Minghao’s head shot up, eyes brightening and mouth instinctively stretching into a smile. He hadn’t had any contact with the outside world since his conversation with Soonyoung – apparently seeing them without him had just been upsetting him further so Minjun had advised they take a break – and now he was desperate for a hug.

He wanted to hear them laugh, feel their arms around him, see their smile and smell something that wasn’t fertiliser and animal dung.

“He’s waiting for you up by the porch.” Minghao paused, his job in the stables still unfinished, but Minjun just chuckled and made a chivvying movement with his hand. “Go on.”

Minghao beamed at him before vaulting over the fence and sprinting across the yard as fast as one could sprint while wearing wellies.

As he ran, he tried to fix his hair, brushing it out of his eyes and tucking it behind his ears. It had grown embarrassingly long during his stay here.

He wanted it to be Seungcheol waiting for him. Or Jeonghan. Or Wonwoo. The three people who needed to hear his apology the most.

But when he rounded the tractor parked in the driveway and caught sight of the person sitting on the porch, staring out over the fields, he knew he’d been wrong.

This was the person he needed to apologise to.

“Hyung?” he whispered tentatively, afraid to reach out and initiate contact for fear that he would break the boy in front of him when he already looked like he was barely held together.

Jun turned his head, revealing the oxygen cannula that gently filtered oxygen through his nostrils, traced spaghetti lines across his cheeks and then hooked behind his ears before meeting beneath his chin.

The thin plastic tube trailed down to his waist and then back up to feed into the small gas cylinder he had slung over his shoulder.

The sight broke Minghao’s heart because he had done that. He had been the one to take away Jun’s ability to breathe without needing constant medical support.

But then:

“It’s only temporary,” his hyung said as he gestured towards the cannula, smiling even though his voice was scratchy and hoarse and his nails were still tinged slightly blue from lack of oxygen. “I need to keep it for a few more weeks and then it can go.”

Minghao wanted to swat at the tears forming in his eyes but he was too humiliated. He deserved to cry for what he’d done, for how he’d damaged that healthy body until it had almost been beyond repair.

“Hao, it’s okay,” Jun whispered, taking a step forwards and raising his arms a little. “I’m okay now.”

But Minghao couldn’t hug him. He couldn’t touch him. He was probably caked in bacteria, giving off a strong odour of fertiliser that might trickle into Jun’s airway and render him comatose for another month. And even though the rational part of him knew that wasn’t how things worked, the rest of his mind was adamant.

He was not worthy of Jun’s forgiveness.

His hyung gave a tiny gasp of shock when Minghao dropped to his knees in front of him, his gaze still resolutely fixated on the ground as he bent forwards and brushed his nose to the dirt in a full bow.

“I’m sorry,” he whimpered, his entire body trembling with the tears it was shedding like a second skin, dribbling into the dust in front of his face.

“I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry I didn’t listen. I’m sorry I didn’t do anything when … when you were … dying. I’m sorry I lied to you. I’m sorry I was so cruel. I’m sorry you made yourself sick because you thought you couldn’t leave me alone. I’m sorry, hyung. I’m so sorry. I know I can never make it up to you but I’ll try. Anything you need from me, you can have it. I’m just so sorry. I …”

Hands closed around his shoulders and he let out another shuddering sob even as he was pulled up from the ground to see Jun kneeling in front of him, his own eyes sparkling as he took his little brother’s face in his hands.

“I forgive you,” he said. “I’m not going to tell you it wasn’t your fault but I forgive you. I forgave you the moment I woke up because I heard that you came here and I heard that you were trying and I am so, so, so proud of you, Minghao. So proud.”

Minghao nodded, his lip trembling like a baby as his hyung absorbed the tears on his face with the pads of his thumbs and the words escaped his mouth before he could stop them, before he could remember just how fragile Jun still was.

“Can I hug you?”

He knew it was wrong as soon as he’d said it. He couldn’t touch Jun.

His touch was poison. His touch broke people and put them in comas and left them choking up their own blood in the middle of the landing. He could never touch Jun again.

So why was his hyung laughing at him?

“Absolutely.”

And then there were arms around his body and a chin on his shoulder and a hand cupping the back of his head and they were still kneeling on the ground and Minghao’s legs were starting to go to sleep but it didn’t matter. Because Jun was touching him and he wasn’t breaking.

Maybe he wasn’t poison after all.

“Can we stand up now?” Jun whispered in his ear and Minghao hadn’t realised they’d been here for so long. He’d simply been relishing in the physical contact from the one person he craved more than anything else. “My legs are cramping.”

He nodded at once, pulling away from the embrace and rising to his feet, stooping down to help Jun as the older boy wavered slightly and almost stumbled.

“Are you okay?”

The smile he received in return, unlike so many he’d seen in the last few weeks, was genuine. It was real. It wasn’t forced or twisted or strained as the owner tried to appease the kid with the drug addiction.

“I’m fine,” Jun assured, giving Minghao’s shoulders a squeeze. “My lungs are a little weaker than they used to be but I’m not made of glass, Hao. You don’t need to ask to touch me and you certainly do not need to be afraid of me. Okay?”

Minghao was on the verge of answering before he truly understood that he didn’t want to. He wasn’t ready to make promises that he couldn’t keep. Not anymore.

And truth be told, he was desperately afraid of Jun. Afraid that he might suddenly start wheezing and collapse and cough up blood like he had all those weeks ago.

“Do you want to feed the lambs?” he said instead, and Jun nodded so eagerly that it was impossible for Minghao not to break into an endearing smile.

His high-on-anaesthesia self that still resided as a recording on Chan’s phone had been absolutely right: Jun was beautiful. 

** _June 14, 2021_ **

_ Award-winning boyband set for first comeback in over a year. _

_ Seventeen took an unexplained and unexpected leave of absence in December, 2019, without word from the members or the company on why they had chosen to drop out of the public eye. But now, after eighteen months, the boy group have announced the release of their latest album, entitled _ ‘Coming Clean’ _ that the artists themselves have described as a collection of battle songs to help with the fight we all make on a daily basis. _

_ As of yet, neither the idols nor their management company have disclosed where they have been hiding out for so long but member The8 – full name Xu Minghao – did leave this quote on their Twitter page. _

**“We as a group would like to apologise for our sudden absence from the public eye but we are back and we will do everything we can to show you a better side of ourselves, bringing you new and unique music and plenty of choreography to make up for what we missed. Please remember that Seventeen love Carats with all their hearts.**

**I’ll leave you with this message: Life is a battle. It’s meant to be scary and it’s meant to hurt, but every minute that you stay on your feet – that you stay alive – you are winning.”**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for everything! Let me know who you'd like me to write for next :)

**Author's Note:**

> As always, a shout out to my baby Juno and my wonderwoman Haru.
> 
> Comments and Kudos really help with my confidence and motivation so if you have a spare moment, let me know what you think! Have a great day!


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